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THE TRUE STORY OF 



T ^f-y 



U. S. GRAN 1 



THE AMERICAN SOLDIER 



TOLD FOR BOYS AND GIRLS 



BY 

ELBRIDGE S. BROOKS 

u 

Author of 

"The True Storv of Christopher Columbus." "The True Story of George Washington, 

" The True Story of Abraham Lincoln," " The Century Book for Young 

AmeYicans," "The Story of the United States," "Historic, 

Boys," "Historic Girls," "A Boy of the First 

Empire," and many others 



ILLUSTRATED 



KUi* i.^ 



BOSTON 
LOTHROP PUBLISHING COMPANY 



/V^'' 



.t. 



e:^ 



COPYKIGHT, 1897, 

BY 

LOTIIllOP PUBLI.SHING COMPANT. 



■ €• * 

Berwick & Smith, Norwood, Mass., I'.S.A. 



PREl-ACH. 



Thk life-story of every j^real American ccnitains much that is startlinj^-, 
much that is marvellous, and much that is inspiring, as, looking- bark, we 
read it from its startinj^^ point. 

The true story of America's g^reatest soldier, Ulysses S. Grant, is not lack- 
ing in the elements that give to the stories of Washington, Lincoln and Franklin 
the Havor of moral and romance. 

The son of a western tanner became the leader of the world's mightiest 
armies; the Ohio school boy became the ruler of the greatest of modern repub- 
lics; the modest and retiring gentleman became the victorious general; the 
broken and discouraged farmer and clerk became the foremost man of his day 
in all the world 

As an example of persistence, of determination and of will, of a clear head 
in emergencies and a great heart in victory, of modesty, patience, simplicity, 
strength and zeal, the record of the struggles and successes of U. S. Grant is a 
lesson to young and old alike, and his story is one most fitting to be included 
in this series of "Children's Lives of Great Men." 

The words of the president of the republic, spoken above the brave general s 
last resting-place, in the grand mausoleum beside the Hudson, are eminently 
appropriate in this connection. They serve as the best possible preface to this 
life of the greatest American soldier. 

"With Washington and Lincoln," said President McKinley, "Grant had 
an exalted place in hi.story and the affections of the people. To-day his 
memory is held in equal esteem by those whom he led to victory and by those 
who accepted his generous terms of peace." 

To which may be added this portrait of our great general from the same 
poet-patriot who said grand words of Washington and Lincoln — I mean James 
Russell Lowell: 

" He came grim, silent; saw and did the deed 

That was to do ; in his master grip 
Our sword flashed joy; no skill of words could breed 

Such sure convictions as those close-clamped lips ; 
He slew one dragon, nor, so seemed it, knew 

He had done more than any simplest man might do." 

E. S. B. 



COXTTiXTS 



CHAPTER I. 

WHY A HOUSE WAS PUT INTO A HOX ....... I i 

CHAl'THR II. 

ULYSSKS FACES THE MUSIC ......... 31 

CHAPTER III. 

H(,)W THE LIEUTENANT MARCHED OVER THE liORDER .... 54 

CHAPTER IV. 

HOW HE FOUGHT THE PLAGUE AT PANAMA ...... 73 

CHAPTER V. 

HOW THE CAPTAIN FOUND LIFE A "HARD SCRABBLE" .... 90 

CHAPTER VI. 

Hi'W HI. HEARD THE CALL TO Dl'IV ....... 104 

CnAPTi:R VII. 
HOW THE GENERAL UNLOOSED THE MISSISSIPPI . . . . I 20 

CHAPTER VIII. 

HOW HE FOlf.HI 11 OCT ...... 1 36 



CONTENTS. 
CHAPTER IX. 

HOW THE REPUBLIC GAVE ITS VERDICT . 



• • 



156 



CHAPTER X. 

HOW THE TAX.\ER's SON SERVED THE SECOND TIME . , , . 174 

CHAPTER XI. 

HOW ULVSSES SAW THE WORLD 



189 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE OLD general's LAST EIGHT . 2o6 

CHAPTER XIII. 

WHAT THE WORLD SAVS . . 220 



LIST ()!• ILLUSTRATIONS 



At Appomattox. 

The house in which Grant was born . 

Grant's tirst election-day .... 

The r.irthplacc of U. .'^. Grant 

Where the United States will make a park 

The r.irthplace as it looks to-day 

The Memorial Uuilding in which the IJirthplace stand 

" Stumping " at the swimming hole 

John Quincy Adams 

IJlindfolding the balky colt .... 

" So he went along through a happy boyhood ' 

"That's jest the very lowest I can sell the critter for, Lyss, 

The " country schoolmarm " of Grant's boyhood days 

" Might just as well send this little fellow of yours, Squire 

Ulysses sees the sights .... 

In camp at West Point .... 

Cadet Grant's f.amous horseback leap 

Cadet life out-of-doors .... 

Kosciusko's monument at West Toint 

General Zachary Taylor 

Grant rides for ammunition at Monterey . 
Chepultepec — the " West Point " of Mexico 
Grant said, " we're coming in ! " and they did 
The battery in the steeple .... 
The Cathedral in the City of Mexico 

lUill fight in Mexico 

The dangerous trip " overland " in " the fifties." 
Target practice in U. S. A. barracks . 



Frontis. 



said 



the 



farm 



'3 
i6 

i8 

20 
20 
20 

2S 

-9 

35 
3S 
4' 
45 
49 
50 
52 
57 
59 
61 

63 
<;6 
(& 

71 
75 
76 



-> -» 



-/ 



LIST OF ILLl'STRAriOyS. 

The march across the Isthmus j-S 

He cared for the sick and fought the plague Si 

Grant in the plague camp at Panama S3 

Cold weather sentry duty, in barracks S6 

A hard road to travel . S7 

" Captain Grant found out what work really was." ......... 92 

Grant as a wood-peddler .............. m 

With the Gray and the Bay ............. 95 

" Hardscrabble," the cottage that Grant built for himself in Missouri 100 

Grant's home in CJalcna, in 1S61 106 

A " new recruit," in 1S61 .............. 109 

The Court House at Galena ............. no 

" .Men 1 go to your quarters," said Colonel Grant n^ 

" I prefer to do my first marching in a friendly country," he said 117 

Grant at IJelmont ............... 

Grant at Shiloh ................ 

Grant's charge at .Shiloh .............. 130 

Major-General U. S. Grant .............. j-jj 

Spot where Grant met Pemberton to arrange for the surrender of Vicksburg . . . . i-:^ 

A Confederate sharpshooter at Lookout Mountain ......... 139 

President Lincoln handing Grant his commission as Lieutenant-General ..... 142 

Grant and his Generals .............. 143 

" I shall fight it out on this line if it takes all summer." ........ 147 

The ninth of April, 1865 149 

They saluted like gentlemen and soldiers ........... 152 

At the Grand Review in Washington 154 

" Grant was the hero of the hour "............ 15- 

Grant and his family ............... 139 

A boy's first view of General Grant ............ 161 

Grant and Johnson ............... 164 

At the inauguration ............... 169 

The new Washington as Grant made it 171 

The city of Geneva in Switzerland where the Court of Arbitration met ..... 173 

Charles Sumner ................ 173 

Horace Greeley 177 

President Grant delivering his second inaugural address 179 

William T. Sherman ............... 1S2 

"Let no guilty man escape" ............. 1S5 

Memorial Hall, Philadelphia iS6 

Lord Ueaconsfield ............... 190 

William 1 191 



LIST OJ' J LLU SIR AT IONS. 



lixPresidcnt Grant 

The Norman Gatu ....... 

Grant and Hismarck 

Windsor Castle, the home of the Queen of England . 
Gi;u\t addressing the workingnien at Newcastle, Kng. 
General Grant landing at Nagasaki, in Japan 

The Gate at I.ucknnw, India 

The Golden Gate, San Francisco Harbor . 

Grant's home in East Sixtv-sixth Street. New York City 

The harbor of New Voik 

The old General's last fight 

The cottage on Mount McGregor, near Saratoga, in which 
The outlook at >[ount McGregor .... 
The temporarv tomb of General Grant, Riverside Drive, N 
The view across the river from Grant's tomb at Riverside 

Hancock and Grant 

At Spottsylvania 

The Grant monument at Chicago .... 
Where our hero sleeps at Riverside . . . • 
The second funeral of Grant 



ew Vnrk 



CJeneral Grant died 



Citv 



•93 
194 
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'97 
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Zf \ 

-04 
205 
:o8 
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2'3 
217 
21S 
221 



224 

"5 
22S 



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Till' TRUJ-: s^oR^' oi' 



ULYSSi:S S. GRANT 



CIIAITLR 1. 



WHY A HOUSI-: WAS TUT INTO A BOX. 




HIS is a story for the boys and girls of .America. 
It is a true story. It is the story of an Ameri- 
can. It is a storv of adventure, of fis/htinir 
and of '-lorv. It is the storv of the 'greatest 
soldier of the Republic — the story of Ulysses 
-^'' S. Grant. 
I do not wisii to tell you the story of this remarkable 
man simply because he foui^ht and won jgreat battles, nor 
because, for full\- twentv years, he was the foremost man 
and the chief citizen of the United States of .America, nor 
because I delight to write (^f war and bloodshed and victory. 
I do not. I abominate war. I hate bloodshed. I know 
that there are two sides to every victorv. But the storv of 
General Grant seems tome one that all the bovs and Ln'rls of 

1 1 



12 



JF//V A HOUSE WAS PIT INTO A BOX. 



America can take to heart. It is one that shouhl help and 
strengthen and inspire them. For as they read in these 
pages, how, out of obscurity came honor, out of failure 
fame, out of hindrances perseverance, out of indift'erence 
patriotism, out of dullness genius, out of silence success, 
and, out of all these combined, a glorious renown, they may 
see. in this man's advance into greatness, a reason for their 
own doing their best — patiently, unhesitatingly, persistently. 
For it was thus that Grant rose to honor and renown ; it 
was thus that the tanner's son of Georgetown became the 
freneral of the armies of the Republic, that the horse-boy 
of the Ohio farm became the President of the United States. 
Let me tell you his story. 

In the vcar 1S21 there stood on the banks of the Ohio 
river, in Clermont County in southwestern Ohio, twenty-five 
miles to the east of Cincinnati, a small frame house, with 
one storv and an ell. It was the home of Jesse Root Grant 
and Hannah, his wife. Jesse Grant was a smart and indus- 
trious young tanner who had settled at this spot on the 
Ohio River. It was known as Point Pleasant. Here he 
had <'one into the business of tanning hitles into leather, 
being backed up with money by a man who wished to have 
his son learn the tanner's trade. 

Point Pleasant was a little settlement o{ some fifteen or 
twent\' families. It has n(U gr(n\-n niucli in all tlu^e years; 
for, to-dav it is a little village of Init one hundred and 



N, 






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//'//}■ ./ HOUSE WAS PUT INTO A BOX. 15 

t\\cnt\'-fi\'c people; but it is more famous than maiu- lari^'cr 
and more pushing' places just because it was the birthplace 
of a ijreat American. 

1 he house ot Jesse ("irant, the tanner, stood back from 
the br(\ad ri\'er some three hundred feet. A >mall eurk 
flowed past the door anil tumbled into the ()hio I'ixer; back 
of the house rose a little hill ; close at hand was the tanxard 
where the bark o\ trees, brought from the woodland near b\', 
was ground into the reddish bark-dust called tan — the stuft 
that helps turn calf-skin and cowhide into leather. 

Int(^ this pleasant but sim|)le little home beside the beau- 
tiful Ohio, on the twenty-seventh day of April in the year 
1822. a baby boy was born. He was a strong, promising- 
looking little fellow and weighed just ten and three (juarters 
pounds. 

The ycning tanner and his wife were very proud of their 
first bab}', of course, and elid not think he should be named 
without talking over such an important matter with their 
folks. So, when the baby was about a month old, Jesse 
Grant hitched up his horse and wagon and took his wife 
and baby o\er to grandpa's, ten miles away. 

There they held a family council over the baby's name. 
ii\er\one had a diflerent name to propose, and it was finally 
decided to \'ote for a name 1)\- ballot. 

So the father and mother, the irrandfather and s/rand- 
mother and the two aunts wrote, each on a slip oi paper, the 
name he or she liked best ; the slips were put int(^ a hat. 



i6 



n'//y A HOUSE WAS PUT INTO A BOX. 



and then one of the aunts drew out a slip. The name on 
the first slip drawn out was to be the baby's name. And 

the name drawn out was Ulysses. 

Thus you see, almost the first thing- that happened to this 
little Ohio baby was a decision by ballot. Do you suppose 
it was, what we call, prophetic? It may not have been, but 
don't you see, just forty-six years afterwards, almost to a 
dav, the representatives of the American people met in con- 
vention and the 
first ballot they 
took declared that 
Ulysses S. Grant 
should be their 
candidate for 
President of the 
United States. 

So the baby 
was called Ulys- 
ses — and Ulysses, you know, was a great soldier ot the old, 
old da\-s. But tliis baby's grandfather so much liked the 
name he had written — it was Hiram — that the bain's 
father and mother said that should be a part of their boy's 
name, too. And lliram, \'uu know, was a \cry wise and 
l)rave ruler in l)ible times. There again, you seethe baby's 
name was just a bit prophetic, for they ga\"e him the names 
of a great soldier and a wise ruler; and as Hiram Ulysses 
Grant the bab\- was christened. 




grant's first election-day. 



]r//y .1 no LSI-: was j'CJ' j.xto a nox. 17 

When this bain*, however, grew to be a big boy and 
went away to sehool he lost the name of Hiram b\- a \cr\' 
funn\' mistake, of which I will tell xou later. 15}' this mis- 
take the boy's name became Ulysses Simpson Grant, and 
thus it came to pass that, as I'. S. Grant, this Ohi(j boy 
hnalK' became '"'reat and famous. 

The baby Ulysses did not live long in the little frame 
cottai^e beside the Ohio; for, when he was but ten months 
oKi. his father Jesse had a good chance to go int(j the tan- 
ning and leather business in a much larger place, and so 
the family moved away from the little village with its attrac- 
ti\e name oi Point PleaScUU. 

Ikit the birthplace of a great man is always a notable spot, 
no matter how short a time it was his home. So, of course, 
that little frame house at Point Pleasant became cjuite a 
show place when the little baby who had been born there in 
1S22 became, forty years after, a very famous man. 

The cottage stood for a long time on the banks of th^ 
great ri\'er; but. at last, in the vear iSSS, a river boatman 
named Captain Powers bought the old house and loaded it 
on a llat-boat and floated it up the river to Cincinnati. 
Then it was taken off the flat-boat ami twenty-four hor.^e:5 
were hitched to it and dragged it to the corner oi Elm 
and Canal streets in the city of Cincinnati. There it was 
exhibited to thousands of \'isitors. as one of the great sights 
of the Ohio Centennial H.xposition of iSSS. 

After a few months, the house was bought bv a rich 



i8 



JF/fV 4 HOUSE WAS PUT IXTO A BOX. 



Ohio man named Chittenden, who carried it off to Columbus, 
the capital of Ohio; he set it up on the State Fair Grounds 
and there it staid until the year i.'^96. when Mr. Chittenden 
presented the famous house to the State of Ohio and moved 
it to another part of the Fair Grounds. And there a 







THE HIRTHt'LACE UK U. S. GRANT. 



memorial building was built around it, to protect and pre- 
serve the little cottage in which our greatest soldier first saw 
the light. 

So, to-day, if you go to the beautiful city of Columbus 
in tile State of Ohio, and ride (Hit t(^ the Fair Grounds you 
can see the birthplace of General Grant packed carefully 



lV//y .1 IIOLSK WAS J'LT JXTO A J! OX. 19 

a\v:i\' for safe kccpin;^" in a i^rcat honsc-box of l)rick and 
elass ami iron. Tliis is called the drant Memorial lUiildin-'". 

When \'ou ha\e read his stoi'\- n'ou will understand \\h\- 
the birthplace of (icnei-al (ii-aiit is so interestinj^'' an object 
to all the world, and \\\\\ it has been put into a box for peo- 
ple to look at; thoui^h it does seem a pity that the little old 
h(^use c(^uld not ha\'e been kept on the \'ery spot where- it 
stood when, on the twenty-seventh of April, 1S22, Ulysses 
Simpson Grant was ushered into the great world that was, 
in after years, to S(^ respect and honor him. 

But the site of that great little house is still a notable 
spot even though the house itself has been carted away, 
and, even as I write, the Congress of the United States is 
considering a plan to buy all the lantl round about the spot 
where Grant was born and to la\- it out and beautif\- it info a 
National Park, thus preser\'ing for the people of the L'nited 
States the place where General Grant was born. 

As I have told you. the baby Ulysses, when he was ten 
months old, moved awaN'from Point Pleasant. His father 
set up a tanner)' at Georgetown in Prown Count\-. ten miles 
back from the Ohio Ri\er. twenty miles east of Point Pleas- 
ant, anil almost hft\- miles from Cincinnati. 

I think vou will be able to tind the town on anv eood 
map of Ohio, for it is cpiite a place now. It is a town of fif- 
teen hundred people, tjuite a cit\' you see in comparison ti) 
the little hamlet of Point Pleasant where the cfreat American 
soldier was born. 



20 



IF//}- A no USE WAS PUT INTO A BOX. 



Here, at Georgetown. I'lysscs lived as a boy until he 
was seventeen years old. His father made quite a suc- 
cess of his tannery and leather 
business and became very well- 
:no\\n in his own neighbor- 
)od. Jesse Grant, the father 
of I'lysses, was never what 
we call a rich man, but he 

was a prosper- 

1 



ous one. He 

was always, as 

General Grant 

himself tells us, 

in what is called 

" comfortable 

circumstances." 

I n d e c d , soon 

after he moved 

to GeorQ-etown he built a neat and 

convenient, small brick house and, 

in addition to his tannerx'. had a 

good-sized and prockietix'e larm. 

.-UHRRE THE UNriEI. STATES WILL MAKK '^'^l^^^ l''"'^"!^ hoUSC iS StiU Staud- 

A I'AKK. 2 — IIIK lilKTHl'l.ACK AS IT . ^ ,^ . , 

LOOKS To-oAv. 3— THE MKMORiAi. mg ou ou c oi U eo rgcto w u s s t rccts, 

liUII.DING I.N WHICH THK BIKlIirLACE 

STANDS. ^'^,-nl though it has been changed 

a little in appearance, any boy or girl who visits the busy 
little Ohio town can see the places that were familiar to 




//■//)■ ./ HOUSE WAS PUT IXTO A BOX. 21 

^•ouno- L'lvsscs in and about the house where his l)o\-hf)0'I 

was spent. 

They will still show you the family sitting-room with its 
h'v^ tire-place ami its old-fashioned mantel, the front hall and 
the odd-looking- staircase — just the same to-day as when Ulys- 
ses climbed sleepily up to bed — the little hall bedroom which 
was " I'lvsses' room." tlie old building;- in which he learned, 
much ao-ainst his will, his father's trade of a tanner, the 
tumble-down buildin;^- where he first went to school, and, 
just back of the tanyard, the "Town Run." a little brook 
along- which lay the favorite play-ground of the Grant boys. 
A mile out of town you could find that deep still spot in White 
Oak Creek familiar to generations of Georgetown boys as 
their "su-imming hole" — and where, no doubt, Ulysses often 
"stumped" his companions with many a difficult or fancy 
water-act, for the boy was an excellent swimmer. 

Youmr Ulysses Grant never took kindlv to the trade of 
a tanner, lie liked the farm best, especially the horses. 
IJefore he was six years okl he could ride horseback or hold 
the reins as well as many an older boy, in town or country. 
Before he was ten years old his father took him to a circus 
ami let him ride a pon\' around the ring, and as he grew 
through bovhood he became famous, in all the Georgetown 
region, as the best horseman and horse-trainer thereabouts. 
Indeed, he loved horses all his life, and he owned some very 
fast and beautiful ones when he became a man. 

It was because he liked horses and farm-life so much 



22 



U'l/Y' A HOUSE WAS Pi'T IXTO A BOX. 



that his father did not make him do much work about the 
tannery, but, instead, let him do about as he pleased on the 
farm out of school hours. 

For Jesse Grant believed in boys going- to school. He 
himself, had not had many such advantages, but he deter- 
mined that his boys should have just as good an education 
as he could get for them in the farming section in which 
they lived. 

From all I can hear I don't think the boy Ulysses really 




"stumping" at the swimming hole. 



enjoyed going to school, much better than any healthy 
active boy who is fond of out-door life. But all such boys 
are very glad in later years that their fathers or mothers 
insisted on their going to school regularly, and we are 
assured bv General Grant that from the time he was old 
enouijh to cro to school to the vcar that he left home he 
never missed a (|uarter from school. This was quite dift'er- 
ent from that other great American, Abraham Lincoln, was 



11'//]' .1 //OL'SE WAS /'(■/• /xro A /WX. 27, 

it not ? For he. noli know, ncx-cr jjot xmnc than a year's 
sehoolin:^' in all his wc^nderful life. 

A l)o\' \\h(^ lioes go to school, however, isn't much of a 
boy if he cannot tind some time to play. So yon ma\- be 
sure that " Lvss Grant." as the Georcfetown bovs called him. 
made the most of his spare time. 

He tells us himself, in his sketch of his boyhood, that he 
had as many prixileges as any boy in the villa^^e and prob- 
ably more than most of them. 

Chief amoni^- these pri\ ileges was permission to go any- 
where or i\o an\thing allowable in a boy, after his "chores" 
were done. And this meant all sorts of boyish sports — 
fishing, hunting, swimming, skating, horseback riding, doing 
"stunts " at jumping and \\restlin'-- in the tanvard alone: the 
Tow n Run antl in the " Swimming Hole," and all the other 
jolly out-door and in-door good times that belong to the vil- 
lage boy even more than to the country or citv Ixn*. 

But it was by no means a case of all play and no work 
to this moderate, easv-going but fun-lovin*-- \-illa<7e bov. He 
tells us that when he was a boy everyone worked in his 
region — " excei)t the very poor;" and Jesse Grant, while 
allowing his boys all possible liberty, gave them also plenty of 
\\ ork to do. 

Ulysses, as we know, hated the tannerv work. P.ut he 
loved farmdife: so his father set him at work, after school 
hours or in \acation time, "doing clK)res " on the farm. 

While yet a little fellow the bov would drive the horses 



24 /r//)' A HOUSE WAS FIT IXTO A BOX. 

hauling cord-wood or logs from the wood-lot to the farm. 
At eleven, he could hold a plough and turn a furrow almost 
as well as a man, and until he was seventeen he did all the 
" horse-work " on the farm — breaking up the land, furrow- 
ing, ploughing, bringing in the loads of hay and grain, haul- 
ing the wood and taking care of the live stock. 

He confesses to us, in the story of his life, that he did 
not like to work; but he says that, like it or not, he did do 
as much work when he was a boy, as any hired man will do 
to-day — and attended school besides. 

And yet, as I have told you. he managed to find time to 
play. The home rule was never severe. He was never 
punished, and rarely scolded by his parents; so he must 
have been a pretty good boy, mustn't he ? He tells us that 
they never objected to his enjoying himself when he could, 
for they let him go fishing, or swimming, or skating; they 
even allowed him to take the horses and go away on a visit 
with one of his boy friends. 

Once, he \A'ent off in this way to Cincinnati, fifty miles 
away ; another time, he took a carriage trip to Louisville, 
with his father — a big journey for a bo)' in those da\s. 
Once he went, with a two-horse carriage, a se\'entv-mile ride 
to Chillicothe, and again, with a ])ov of his invn age, on the 
same kind of a seventy-mile ride to Flat Rock in Kentucky, 
to \-isit a friend. W'liat a erood time those two fifteen-vear- 
old boys must ha\e hail on that trip! And you may be 
sure, Ulysses did the dri\-ing. 



l^ .-■. imlll 




m^. 





JUlIN (JLINCY ADAMS. 

Prtsidfttt of tlu I'nittii Ulates -whiu Gr.uit was a f>ffv. 



U'JIY .1 //OL SF. WAS ri'T IX'I'O .1 /UhX. 27 

lUit he h:ul a tussle (Irixini'- lionic. Let me tell you about 
it. He saw a horse he liked, and he "swapped oil " one ol 
his earriaije horses for it, <'cttin''- ten dollars to hoot. But 
the new horse had never been driven in harness, and the 
two boys hatl a tearful time i^^ettini; an unbroken, balk\-, 
kickin;;', nervous horse to i^o ii-i a span. In fact, the boy 
who was with I'lysses got frightened and after one very 
risky runaway adventure with the new horse, he deserted 
and went home in a freight wagon. But Ulysses was bound 
to get that new horse home and w^ould not give in to its 
pranks. At one time it really looked as if he would have to 
give up the jol) ; but, as a last resort, he got out of the car- 
riaue, blindfolded the l)alkv colt with his bi<'; red bandanna 
handkerchief, and so drove the funny-looking team to an 
uncle's, not far from his home. 

It was such things as this in the boy that worked out 
into equally pronounced qualities in the man. I'lysses S. 
Grant had, as bov and man, determination, grit, tenacity — 
what you boys call " stick-to-il-i\eness " or "sand." When 
he reallv set out to do a thin-'' he did it — whether it were 
to dri\'e home a skittish colt or fisj'ht a sjreat war to the 
finish. 

Would \(ni like to know what sort of lookin*-' bov 
•' Lyss Grant" was in his early teens? He was a short, 
sturdy little fellow, with a careless way of walking, and 
inclined to be round-shouldered. He was a freckle-faced, 
"sober-sided" lad. with strai-'ht sand\' hair and blue e\'es, who 



28 



WHY A HOUSE WAS PL'T IXTO A BOX. 






got out of things when he could, but did them uncomplainingiv 
if he felt it to be his duty. He was quiet, no bragger, just a 
bit shy, but when roused to action he was quick and deter- 
mined. He was generally the successful leader in the snow- 
ball fights, no one in the county could outride him. and 
though never quarrelsome he was no coward. Above all 
else, like Washington and Lincoln, he hated a lie, and his 

word could alwavs be 
depended upon. 

One other trait he 
had that helped make 
his success later in 
life. I have told vou 
that he was persistent 
and stuck to anvthins: 
he had made up his 
mind to do. He was 
also a planner. If he 
had a hard piece of work in hand, he did not just go at it 
thoughtlessly; he sat down and planned it out. 

They still tell the story in Georgetown of the " cute " 
way in which the twelve-year-old Ulysses beat the men oi 
the town on a peculiar jol) of stone-lifting. It seems that 
while a new building was going up in llu' town, the bo\' 
" Lyss," as everyone called him. dro\-e the ox-team that 
hauled the stone for the foundation from While (Jak Creek. 
One big stone was selected for the ch^orstep. Init after the 




BLINDFOLDING THE BALKY COLT. 



WHY A i/orsF. u'.ts rrr ixro ./ jwx. 



iiKii haJ tUijLi'cd awav al it fm- hours they concluded it was 
too biu; to lift an«l that the)- nui>t L;iv(j it up. 

" IIciv, let nu- ti\' it." said Ulysses; "if \-(»u'll help nie, 
I'll load it." 

'rhe\- all lau!^hed at him. hut pron"iise<l to give him a lift. 
Then the- l)o\- asked the men to prop up one end of the 
stone. Idiey did so, and "chocked" it. Then Ulysses backed 









, r 













^ 

h*- 




E 



"so 111. wi.M alu.m; iiikour.ii a uai'I'Y iiuvuooIj." 

the wasjfon over the stone, slun-'' it underneath the wairon bv 
chains, hoisted u]^ the other end of the stone the same way 
and then hauled it in triumph into town. 

And to-dav. if vou arc in rieorsj;etown, thev will show vou 
in front of that sanie buildimj'. now an enij'ine h(nise. the 
verv stone, picked out as a doorstep and now set in the side- 



30 Jr//y A HOUSE WAS PUT IXTO A BOX. 

walk, which the twelve-year-old Ulysses en^^nneered out of 
White Oak Creek and hauled into town. 

They tell nuicli the same story of the boy and his big; black 
horse, Dave, and how he loaded up and hauled off a load of 
o-reat loes, cut out for buildin-'- beams. This time, he was 
quite alone in the woods; but with a fallen tree-trunk as a 
lever and slide, and with the help of Dave and a strong rope, 
he lifted the hea\'v logs to the truck and brought them home 
in triumph, much to the surprise of his father. 

This, you see, was planning to some advantage; but it 
was this same patience ami invention that helped him to win 
victories later, and that men then called strategy. 

So he went along, through a pleasant, happy boyhood, 
full of its trials and its crosses, no doubt — e\-en the best- 
reared boy had these, and they help to make a man of him 

but learning gradually those lessons of integrity, honesty, 

patience, self-dependance and self-help, which served him so 
well in the worries and disappointments, the failures and 
disasters, the endeaxors and successes that made up the his- 
tor\- of this later leader of men. 



^ ■/ ) '.S\V/i\V FACI-S THE MISJC. 



c:iiAr'ri':R ii 



ULVSSliS I'ACliS Tin-. MU.sIC. 



nnilERn was nothinij;- really remarkable about the bov- 
-■- hootl of Grant. That ycni have found out already. 
But then, not many boys d(^ have remarkable boyhoods or 
do great things at a time when their ehief business should be 
t'-rowinu' and learning'. The world's historic bovs are few 
and far between ; but it is from the sturdy. acti\-e. healthv, 
hearty, wide-awake, honest, honorable and commonplace boys 
that the world's best men have been made. 

Voung I'lxsses Grant was just one of these healthv, 
commonplace boys. He did well whatever he deliberately 
set out to do, and he could ride and drive a horse better 
than an\' other boy in all that c(Hintr\- round. 

In fact, the most of his own business enterprises while 
he was a bo\' — all boys do have certain business enterprises 
in w hicli the\' eni^aq'e. vou kn(^w. with more or less success 
— were connected with horses. He did not like to be called 
a horse-jockey, for horse-jockies in those da\s were n(^t con- 
sidered altogether respectable ; but he did dcarh' lo\*e a 
horse-trade, and he was cfcnerallv so brii/ht and shrewd at 
this business as to get the best of the bargain. 

T(^ be "^ure. one of his earliest attc-mi)ts at horse-trading 



32 ['LVSSES FACES THE MUSIC 



was not a Ijrilliant success — thou-h he did get the horse he 
wanted I It seems, w hen he was about ten years old he fell 
quite in love with a certain colt that belonged to a farmer 
near bv. He begged his father to buy the colt, and at last 
Jesse Grant commissioned the boy to see the farmer and 
make the bargain. 

''Offer him twenty dollars for the colt, Ulysses," he said; 
"if lie won't take that, try him with twenty-two and a half, 
and if he won't take that, ofter him twenty-five. But you 
mustn't go over twenty-five dollars. It"s all the colt's 

worth." 

So Ulysses, proud of his mission, went to the farmer. 

"What did your father say you might pay?" asked the 
farmer, and Ulysses, truthful always, and recalling his fath- 
er's instructions replied, " He told me to ofter you twenty 
dollars, and if that wouldn't d(^. twenty-two fifty, and if that 
wasn't enough, twentv-five ; Ijut not a cent more." 

"Well, now, that's jest the very lowest I can sell the crit- 
ter for. Lyss," the farmer declared. " Vou can have the colt 
for twenty fi\'c dollars. l)ut not a cent less." 

Ulysses drove the colt home, delighted with his l)usiness 
ability. But, as his father questioned him. the truth came 
out. and it was ver\- long l)efore the poor bo)- heard the last 
of the "<>-ood joke on Lvss (n-ant," as the boys called it. 

I-Uit that first attempt at a horse trade, as the saying is, 
"cut the bov's eve-teetli." That is, he learneil wisdom by 
experience, and after that he became one o{ the best judges 



ULYSSES FACES THE MUSIC. 



33 



of horses ami prices in the neighburhoud, so that his lather 
let him do about as he pleased in horse trades, for he knew 
he could reh" on the boy's judi^nient. 

In this business, and b)' doin^i;' " odtl jobs" of haulinj^^ 
and trucking;', Ulysses made quite a bit of money for a boy 







"that's jest THK very lowest 1 CAN SEI.1, THE CRITTER KOR, LYSS," SAID THE FARMER. 

of those days, and, in all this, hewon no little reputation 
as a business boy. 

I ilon't ima;^ine he had a \'er\' clear idea as to what he 
wished to do when he became a man. Not man\* bovs 
really do know what they desire or are fitted for, until thev 
learn 1)\' experience, in what direction their tastes lie. One 
thin'-', however. Ulvsses ilid t'eel certain about. He did not 



34 ULYSSES FACES 7 HE MUSIC. 

mean to l^c a tanner, if he could help it. He was like many 
another l)ov, you see, who, though he does not exactly know 
what he wishes to do, is quite sure that he doesn't intend 
followin'j" his father's line of business. And that decision 
has led to manv a mistake and many a failure in the career 
of men — though not always. 

I have told you that Ulysses was kept pretty steadily at 
school from the day w hen he was old enough to learn his 
A B C's. That old Georgetown schoolhouse, as I have said, is 
standing to-day, though it is quite dilapidated. But there the 
boy went from his primer to the three R's — " 'readin'. 'ritin' 
and 'rithmetic," for so folks used to call them. Sometimes a 
man was his teacher, sometimes a woman, and while as he 
says they could none of them teach much nor very well, still 
that country "school marm " of his boyhood days, laid the 
foundation of an education that led finally to the production 
of one of the world's remarkable books. 

Twice, during his boyhood at Georgetown. Ulysses was 
sent away to school in the hope of getting a better education 
than the villaire school of Get^rgetawn afforded. Gnce he 
went to Mavsville in Kentucky, and. after that, to a private 
school at Ripley in Ohio. lUit he was never much (.^ a stu- 
dent ; indeed, as he assures us. he did not take kindly to any ol 
his books or studies, except his arithmetic. And I shouldn't 
l)e surprised if he helped wear cnit the bunches of switches 
that were gathered \'er\- often, from a l)eeeh-wood near the 
schoolhouse, for the teacher's use and the children's correc- 




THK "COUNTRY SCHOOLMARM " OK GRANT'S BOYHOOD DAYS. 



r/.)'ss/-s /'.tc/'.s riiE .\/rs/c. 37 

lion. Those were the ikus of hard whippings at school, 
)()Li know— when (irant was a boy. 

It was while at h(Miie for his Christmas vacation, frojn 
his school at Riple\-, that Ulysses had a great surprise. 

" riysses," said his father, one day, as he finished read- 
ing a letter he had just receixed, " I belie\'e you're going to 
get that appointment." 

"What appointment?" the boy inquired in surprise. 

"W'hv. to West Point," replied his father." I applied to 
Senator Morris for one, and I reckon you'll get it." 

"To West Point," repeated Ulysses, still a bit dazed by 
the news, " why. I don't want to go there." 

" But I want you to," his father said. " I reckon voull 
go if I say so." 

"Well, if you say so, I suppose Pll have to go," said the 
boy slowly. " But I don't want to — I know that." 

The appointment did come in good time, through Mr. 
Hauler, the congressman from that section, and much to the 
surprise of the neighbors. For to their minds, voung Ulvs- 
ses (xrant seemed the last bo\- in the world to go to West 
Point. Four boys had already gone to the famcnis Militar\' 
Academy from that \illage of Georgetown, but then " the\- 
were smart," folks said, and only a smart bov could pass the 
examination for entrance. " Slow little chaj), Lvss is." said 
one of the townsfolk, " might just as well send this little 
fellow of yours, squire-, as that boy of Jesse Grant's." The 
Georgetown people all supposed that going to West Point 



38 



ULYSSES FACES 7 HE MUSIC. 



depended on influence or ability, and they never imagined 
that Jesse Grant had enough of the first, or Ulysses enough 
of the second. Vou know the old Bible saying, don't you : 




•' MIi.IlT JUST AS WK.l.I. SKNMi THIS I.IITI.K I-Kl.I.OW OF VOIKS, SQl'lKK. 

A prophet is not without honor save in his own country 
and anions his own kin. 

To tell the truth, Ul\sscs rather shared the opinion of 
the Georgetown gossips; but when the documents came, he 
knew he must " face the music," as he declared, and tr\' to 
pass those dreaded examinations — the bane and bugl)ear of 
every boy and girl wIk^ goes to sch(^ol. 



ULYSSES FACES THE MUSIC. 39 

But Jesse ('.rant was (Ictcriiiincd that lii> hoy should %o 
to West Point, and w hm the appointnunt did conic he put 
Ulysses in charge ot a special tutor who "coached" the 
slow scholar so well that his teacher felt that the boy would 
pass the cxaniinalion, it' lie did not get " rattled," as the sa)- 

ing' is to-day. 

As the (lav v>{ departure approached, Ulysses found liini- 
sclf looking forward to this journe}- to the East, even though 
he knew that the dreaded examination came at the end of 
the trip. This western boy, of course, longed to see the 
world, as all boys do, and a trip to New York was some- 
thing: to talk about in those davs. 

I'lvsses thought he was quite a traxellcr. He had been 
east as far as Wheeling in X'lrginia ; he hatl been into 
northern Ohio; he had, as you know, visited Cincinnati and 
Louisville and esteemed himself, as he says "the best trav- 
elled boy in Georgetow n." But this trip to West Point was 
indeed a journev. It was almost as much to the Ohio boy 
of sixtv years ago as a trip to Europe or around the world 
is to the American boy of to-daw It meant to him, the 
chance of seeing and inspecting the two great eastern cities, 
Philadelphia and New York. That was enough. To have 
that chance he would williiigl\- risk the examinations that 
were sure t(^ come; but he tells us frankly in his " Memoirs " 
that he was in no luirrv to reach West Point and. boy-like, 
would not have minded a steamboat explosion or a rail- 
r(\'id collision or an\- other acciilent of travel, it it would 



40 ULYSSES FACES 7 BE ML'SJC. 

only hurt him just enough to keep hiiu from going into W^est 
Point. Boys are all alike, aren't they ? I remember when I 
used to wish I could haye some pleasant little happening on 
examination days — a stroke of harmless paralysis, or a tem- 
porary loss of speech, just long enough to excuse me from 
that most dreaded school ordeal. But to Ulysses Grant, as 
to all other boys and girls in a similar situation, " nothing of 
the kind,"' he tells us, " occurred, and I had to face the music." 

At last the time came, and on the fifteenth of May. 1839, 
with a new outfit of clothes and oyer a hundred dollars 
in his pocket, the seyenteen-year-old Ulysses bade "his 
folks'' good-bye and started for Ripley, the riyer town ten 
miles away, where he was to take the steamer for Pitts- 
burg. 

Of course he enjoyed the journey. Eyery boy likes to 
see the sights, eyen if he must face the music at the end of 
the journey. But you may be sure he was in no hurry to 
get to the music. He took things leisurely. Railroads in 
that day were few and far between, and. to reach West Point, 
Ulysses " chan<:red off," on steamboat, canal boat and rail- 
road. He was fifteen days making the trip. To-da)- it can 
be made in almost as many hours. 

The canal boat on w hich he journeyed fnmi Pittsl)urg to 
Harrisbur«'- had to be hauled oy^r the Alleghan\- mountains; 
this wa? interesting, but the boy thought the railway- ride 
from Harrisburg to Philadelphia about the finest, smoothest. 
fastest ooin*'" he had e\er made. 



BIT 




ULYSSES SEES THE SIGHTS. 



CLiSS/<S FACES Tlfl: ML SIC. 43 

"Win-." he wrote home, "at t"iill spcctl our train made as 
much as ciLrhtccn miks an hour! Think of that! " 

And to-dav the limpire State Express easil\- makes, at 
full speed, sixty mdes an hour ! 

Ulysses i)aid a h\-e days' visit to his relations in Phila- 
delphia — and was called to account by letters trom home 
for dalhins;- so long by the way, when he should be at West 
Point. But he " did " Philadelphia pretty thoroui^hly and 
manai^ed to see a good deal of New York — though there 
was not as much of that great city to see then as there is 
to-day. 

At last he sailed up the river to West Point. On the 
thirtv-first of Ma\ he saw the quaint old buildings on the 
heights, climbed the long road from the steamboat dock, 
known to so man\- \isitors. reported at the barracks as an 
applicant for admission and then — faced the music and took 
the examinations for entrance. 

This was the time w hen his name was changed. You 
see, when his ap|)lication was put in. the Congressman who 
filled out the papers forgot Ulysses Grant's full name. He 
mixed him up with his younger brother, Simpson, antl 
thinking that Simpson wa^ Ulysses's middle name, he filled 
in the application for I Ixsses Simpson Grant instead of 
Hiram Ulysses Grant. 

Now, when a thing gets flown in black and white on the 
books of the government, it takes almost an Act of Congress 
to get it off. Ulysses was very much "put out" when his 



^^ ULYSSES J- ACES THE MUSIC. 

papers came to him with the wron-' name, for no one likes 
to have a mistake made in his name, you know ; althoui^h 
"they do say" that young Ulysses always did object to his 
initials, 11-U-G. The boys used to make fun of them, you 
see. Nevertheless, as soon as he reported at West Point, 
he tried to convince the authorities that he was not U. S. 
Grant, but H. U. Grant. 

It was no use. ho\\-ever. The boy's name was down on 
the appointment as Ulysses Simpson Grant; it was so on 
the books of the Academy. It would make a great fuss to 
get it changed and rather than bother about it he let it go. 
So it came to pass that he was U. S. Grant forever. 

The " U. S." made so suggestive a pair of initials that, 
at once, the West Point boys caught them up as the George- 
town boys had his other initials. Thev nicknamed the new 
bov " Uncle Sam ;" and as " Sam Grant " he was known all 
through his cadet days. 

Very much to his surprise, so he assures us, Ulysses 
passed his examination — and, " without difticulty !" He was 
now a West Point cadet. 

That sounds all very fine to you, I suppose. There has 
always been something attractive to American boys and 
girls about West Point cadets. But young I'lysses did not 
think it fine, although of course he was glad to get through 
his "exams" all right. 

Vou see, he did not like the idea o{ being a soldier. He 
did not like the discipline nor the hard work. And as he 



CLi'SSJiS FACES THE MUSIC. 47 

hatl ikU, at that tinu-. tin- least idea that he would ever be in 
the arni\-, he did n<>l Hkc aiiylhiiiL;- about the place, at first 
— not e\tn the camping- out, which \\v thoui^ht very tire- 
some and stupid. 

Indeed, durini; that first winter at West Point, when 
Cong'ress met, Ulysses used to run for the newspaper and 
read the debates in Con<^rress, eagerly. The reason was this. 
There were in those days, many people who did not believe 
at all in a school for the training of soldiers, like West Point, 
even though George Washington had founded it. They 
wished to lIo awa\- w ith the Academv altoirether and that 
very year of i.'^39, a bill was really introduced into Congress 
proposing to " abolish the Military Academy at West Point." 
It was the talk, or debate, on this matter that so interested 
Ulysses Grant, for, so he tells us. he hoped to hear that the 
school had been abolished, so that he could tro home a^-ain. 
Hut, fortunately, the bill did not pass. West Point remained 
and Grant was trained into a soldier. 

So far as his lessons \\ere concerned, I am afraid this 
training did not occupy an\- more of his time than just 
enough to let him squeeze through the sch(^ol. This was 
not because he was a slow or stupid scholar. He was not. 
He hardly ever needed to read a lesson through the second 
time, but trusted t<^ luck to come off without a failure. His 
son tells us that his low standing at school was due to the 
West P(^int librarv. There was a good one there and this 
boy had come from a place where books were scarce. So 



48 rzyss£S faces the ml sic. 

he used the library at the Academy for story books and not 
for works on tactics or his other studies. They were pretty 
g-ood story books however; for he read, while there. Scott and 
Irving" and Marryatt and Cooper and Lever — authors dear 
to the bovs of sixt\' vears acjo. He often told his son that 
that librarv at West Point was like a new world to him. 

But, you see, at West Point, mathematics were the great 
thing, and Ulysses Grant had a good head for figures. So, 
as he got along easily with that tough study, it did not 
make so much difterence about the others. 

He did not tell us in his MemcMrs just where he stood in 
his class, but he does say that if the class had been turned 
the other end foremost he should ha\e been near the head. 
So it is not so hard to tell just about where he stood, is it? 

His lowest marks seem to ha\'e been in French ; his 
highest were in ca\alr\- tactics. That is where his bovish 
traininij as a horseman came in. \ou see. His fame as a splen- 
did horseman even yet exists at West Point. Tliere was 
nothing he could not ride, and his famous high jump on 
the bie sorrel "York "over a bar six feet from the s^round. is 
still marked and sho\\n at West Point as "Grant's upon 
York." 

Would vou like to know \\liat sort o\ a looking bo\- was 
Cadet Grant :^ He was a i)himp, fair-faced, almost under- 
sized little fellow — in fact, he came just within the West 
Point c-ntran(-c- limii o{ five feet; he was cpiiet in manner, 
careless in dress, able t(^ lake care ^^ himself, gi^■ing and tak- 



LV.]-SS£S FACES TIIF. MCS/C. 



49 



mi^ jokes good-naturrdly ; (IctLTmiin-d. if he undertook anv- 
tliiiii;' that he reall\- wished to do; a l)it laz\-, [xrhaps ; nc\cr 
fond of stiid\-, hut never stupid ; shiw to take offense, hut 
ready to hi^ht haek when eornered or imposed Uj)on. 

" It is a Ion- time ago," writes one of his West Point 
associates, '* hut when I recall old scenes, I can still see 
' Sam ' (irant, with his over- 
alls strap})ed down to his 
boots, standing' in front of 
his (.[uarters. It seems but 
yesterday since I saw the 
little fellow Q-oiuij' to the 
riding'diall, with his spurs 
claid^ing on the ground and 
his «'Teat ca\'alr\' sword 
dangling by his side." 

There was nothing- about 
his W^est Point life out of 
the common. He was just 
an ordinary, everv-day cadet, 
going thr(Uigh the training 
that taught him obedience, 
attention, order, health, 

good manners and simple ]i\ing. It is a hard life for some 
boys, with its routine work, its strict rules, its absolute 
obedience to orders, and all the worries and trials that 
make schooldife by rule hard to bear: but Ulysses g^ot 




CADET (-.rant's KAMoCS HORSEBACK LKAT. 



ULYSSES FACES THE MUSIC. 



over his first dislike to it, and, after awliile, was glad that 
Concrress had not "abolished" West Point. He thoiiLidit 
that by the time he <40t through there lie might teach mathe- 
matics in some school 




or college. The one 
thing he was certain 
about was that he 
would not be a sol- 
dier ! 

So his four years 
at W^est Point \\ent 
on — broken only by 
one vacation, when he 
had been two vears at 
the school. Except 
for his famous horse- 
back leap ot six teet, 
three inches — that was on his last examination dav, by the 
way, and in the presence of the high dignitaries called the 
"Board of Directors" — he left no reputation at the Aead- 
cmv, either for high scholarship or great pranks — ncUhing, 
ill fact, to make a boy remember him after he had left the 
school, or to put him at the head of his mates. 

CertainK' he was not at the head o{ his class. He 
graduated ow the thirteenth v>\ June, 1S43, num'her t\\ent\'- 
one in a class of thirl\ -nine — just about half \\a\-. \o\x 
see. 



■*-"rle. 



*^=."jg?g £rrfj:9. 



'■jA 



CADKT I.IKE OUT-OK-nOORS. 



CV.}'SS/-S FACES Tin-: MLSIC. 51 



IK' left West Point thinkinf^- pretty well of himself, as 
most cadets — in fact as most collei^e ])oys do. But there 
is no harm in that, vou know. I wouldn't ijive nun h for a 
boy who didn't haw a pretty fair opinion of himself. It 
helps a fellow on. in a way. So Ldysscs thou«^ht himself 
"the observed of all observers," as he went on his homeward 
journey. 

He considered that the two greatest men in America 
were General Scott, the head of the army, and Captain 
Smith, the commandant of cadets at West Point. And 
thoui^h he did not intend to be an army officer, still he did 
ha\e a dream (M' some day reviewing- the cadets just as Gen- 
eral Scott had done — to his mind, at that time, the highest 
honor in tlie world. But, as he tells us, he remembered that 
horse-trade of his when he was a boy, and so for fear the 
boys would make fun of him. he kept quiet about his ever 
being like General Scott. 

While Ul\sses was at West Point, his father had 
removed his tannery and leather business to a little place 
called Bethel, about twelve miles away, in Clarmont Countv. 
Here the (jrant famil\- lived ; here Ul\sses had spent the one 
vacation granted him when at West Point, and here he went 
after graduation — brevet second lieutenant Ulysses Simp- 
son (jranl. Pourth U. S. Infantry. 

" The " brevet " meant that he w asn't really a second 
lieutenant vet, but he would be so(^n — if he was a eood 

o 

boy and joined his regiment. 



52 



L^ZVSSES FACES THE MUSIC. 



When his new uniform came out to him he felt very big. 
This was natural enough. We all feel fine in new clothes, 
and there is always a fascination to bovs about " soldier 
clothes " — especially if they have been fairly earned, as his 
had been. 

But you know the old saying that " pride goeth before a 

a fall." Our young 
brevet second lieuten- 
ant soon had proof of 
this. 

When his tine "sol- 
dier clothes " came 
home he put them on 
and rode away on 
horseback to Cincin- 
nati, to " show oft'." 
He \\as riding along 
one o\ the city streets, 
thinking, he savs, that 
everyone was looking at him and. feeling himself to ])e cjuite 
as big a man as General Scott, when a ragged, dirty, bare- 
footed little street lM,y — what we call a "mucker" here- 
abouts — called out shrilly: 

"Yah, soldier ! Will you work '^ You bet he won't. He'd 

sell his shirt first." 

Then eyerylxxly laughed. Well! You can imagine what 
a terrible shock this wa^ t(^ the spruce and dignified brevet 




Ku.^i:u;.-.K>>'.i mo.\lmi;nt at wkst point. 



^v )'.v.s7.;.v KicFs riir: Mr sic. 



53 



second lieutenant. But when, soon after, he was hr)mc 
again at In.lhcl, lu; h.ul just such anotiuT shock. 

.At the ohl stacfc tavern across the way, from Grant's 
home worked a diunken w a< '' of a stableman. When the 
triin-lookinj:;' soldier boy had been home a few days, what 
should this stableman do but come into the street ri'/'j'ed 
out in a pair of sky-blue nankeen pantaloons with a white 
stripe alonj;' the seams. This was just the color of Ulysses's 
fine militar\- trousers. Barefooted and bareheaded, but 
niakin;^- the most of the sky-blue pantaloons, the stableman 
paraded up and down the street before the Grant house, 
with an al)surdl\' di<''nitied military walk, imitatiufj; the 
breyet second lieutenant of infantry. 

Of course it set every one to lauidiinir. and of course it 
annoyed Ulysses dreadfully. Indeed, as he says, it quite 
" knocked the conceit " out of him, and it Qrave him a dislike 
for military bluster and military uniforms that he never eot 
o\er in all his life. 

Thus the schoolinp^ at West Point came to an end. It 
had done much for this homespun, awkward country boy 
from the Ohio valley. It had develoju-d his qualities of 
manliness, persistence and endurance ; it liad disciplined and 
trained him into hal)its of obedience and had securely laid 
the foundation of that militar\- knowledge and leadership 
which, thirty years later, was to do such mio-htv service to 
the republic which had educated and developed him. 



54 //err THE LIEUTENANT MARCHED OVER THE BORDER. 



CHAPTER III. 

HOW THI-: LIKUTENANT MARCHKD OVER THE BORDER. 

A A /"E look at things c[uitc differently when we are boys or 
' ' ""iris and when we are men or women. Sometimes, 
however, opinions do not chang'e. This seems to have been 
Grant's case as to the justice of the war with Mexico. 

Eorty years after that war, General Grant wrote in his 
"Memoirs" that he regarded it as one of the most unjust 
ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation. 

He tells us, in the same sentence, that as a young soldier 
he was bitterly opposed to it ; but, you know, the first duty 
a soldier must learn is obedience; and, being a soldier in the 
United States army, owing to the republic his education and 
his training. Lieutenant Grant felt that obedience to orders 
was his supreme duty and, even against his \\ill. he marched 
to the southeast with the troops that were first known as the 
Arm\' (jf Occupation and, later, as the Army of Invasion. 

I do not propose to tell you hei-e the story of the Mexi- 
can War, which was fought in the years 1846 to 1S48. 
That story )'ou can reail in history, and 1 hope in time that 
you will reatl enough al)out it to decitle for yourself that it 
was an unjust and a t\ lannical war — just the same kind of 
a tight as w hen a big bully of a boy doesn't " take one of his 



J/Oir Till-: IJEL-IEXAXT MARCI/J:D Oll-.K 7/f/: HOkJu-.K. 



55 



size," l)ut " pitches into " a little fellow who couldn't possibly 
stand up a-'ainst him. 

From (^ne side, the war w ith Mexico is nothinL: to he 
proud o{\ but from another it is full of spirit and interest. 
I shall simply tell you here of Grant's connection with it, 
and how it helped to make him and other officers brave sol- 
diers, fitting- them for the great and terrible war that came 
thirteen \ears later, lap'elv because of this war airainst 
iMexico. 

When Ul\'sses Grant graduated from the Military 
Academy at West Point in 1.S43, the regular army of the 
L niteel States was a small aftair. It hati only 7500 men in 
all. and there were more than enou<'h officers to szo around. 

But the young lieutenant was given a place in the 
Fourth regiment of the United States Infantry and, after 
ninety days furlough or vacation, was ordered to report at 
an army post at the Mississippi river six or seven miles 
below St. Louis. 

This army post was calletl Jefferson Barracks and was 
then one of the largest in the country, being garrisoned by 
sixteen C(Mn})anies of infantry, or foot soldiers. 

Grant hael wished to belong to a cavalr\' regiment, as 
was natural in S(^ fine a horseman : but w hen his turn to 
choose came, there were no places left in either an artillery 
or a ca\alry regiment. So it was, for hini. what we call 
" Ilobson's choice. " and he became a lieutenant of infantry. 

Jefferson I'arracks is a \ery i)leasant place. It is still a 



56 HOJV THE LIEUTENANT MARCHED OVER THE BORDER. 

military post, you know, hncly situated at the great river. 
Lieutenant Grant had a good deal of spare time there and 
he spent a part of this in visiting the home of one of his 
West Point classmates not far oft'. This farm was called 
Whitehaven, and was about five miles from Jefferson Bar- 
racks. There he fell in love with the girl who afterwards 
became his devoted wife. She was the sister of his class- 
mate and her name \vas Julia Dent. 

At that time young Lieutenant Grant had some idea of 
becomin''' a teacher of mathematics either at West Point or 
some other good school. He even wrote to his former pro- 
fessor at West Point to look out for some such chance for 
him. But, before the opening could be found, the L'nited 
States and Mexico got into trouble ; the little regular armv 
was ordered into Texas; the President declared war against 
the republic of Mexico; volunteers were called for, because 
there were not enough regular troops ; the Mexicans at 
ALatamoras were angry because the Americans were build- 
ing a fort opposite their town; the}' tired the first shot; that 
opened the war; and so it came to pass that, with his little 
American armv of three thousantl men, C^icneral Zachary 
Ta\l()r, whom people called "Old Rough and Read\-," 
invaded Mexico, and \'oun<'' Second Lieutenant Idwsses S. 
Grant marched over the border and en!^"a«'ed in actual war. 

The lirst taste of real war that he had. was in the little 
skirmish known as the Battle oi Palo Alto — that is. tlie 
battle of the hi''h trees — or woods. 



now THE I.IF.L'TEXAXT .^f ARCHED OVER THE B ORDER. 



57 



When, a little before the battle, the yoiin<^ lieutenant 
heard the first guns of confbet, he did not like the j)ros|)ect 
bef(^re hini. Wv wrote about this years afterwards, that he 
didn"t know how ( ieneral Taylor felt, but as for himself, a 
young second lieu- 
tenant who had 
never heard the 
boom of a hostile 
<'un. he telt sorrv 
he had enlisted. 

However he may 
have felt at first, 
he certainly did not 
let his feelings in- 
terfere with his ac- 
tions, for he did his 
duty when really in 
the fi-'ht. I lis com- 
pany protected the 
American artillerv 
which the Mexicans 
tried to capture; he 
helped to dri\e back the Mexican lancers, who came chars/- 
ing against them : anil the stars and strij)es went forward. 

Then thev marched ow, and the next dav fou'-ht another 
little battle at "the palm grove," or as the Mexicans call it, 
" Resaca de la Pal ma." 




GENERAL ZACIIAKY TAYLOR. 

A/Ur-wanh President of the United States. 



58 HOW THE LIEUTEXAXT MARCHED OVER THE BORDER. 

Here Grant was again one of the fighters in a sharp, 
short battle; but he seems to have recalled it when he 
became a famous man, only for the fact that, his captain 
beinc- sent off somewhere on a special mission, the young 
lieutenant was for a time in actual command of his com- 
pany — and felt correspondingly elated, of course. He 
also mentions that he led his men in a fiery charge across a 
piece of ground that had already been charged over and cap- 
tured by the Americans, so that, he says, he had come to the 
conclusion that, so far as he was concerned, the Battle ot 
Resaca de la Palma would have been won just as it was, 
even if he had not been there. 

But this, I imagine, was what you boys call ''only fun- 
nin<'-" as it was just the modestv of the man — for General 
Grant was never a man to put himself forward or brag 
about what he had done. It is certain that, through those 
two years of war, he made quite a record for himselt as a 
brave and valiant young soldier; his name was mentioned 
in reports and despatches ; he was promoted several times 
and he did a great deal of hard work as the quartermaster 
and adjutant o{ his regiment. The c[uartermaster. y(Hi know, 
is the ofhcer whose duty it is to look after the food and 
comfort of the men of his regiment; the adjutant is the 
colonel's chief helper. So you see both these positions are 
busy and responsil)le parts. 

The ijuartcrmaster nceil not go into battle if he does not 
wish to. His chief duty is in and about the camp. But 



I/OW THE IJEi'TEXAXT MARCHED OVER EI/E j: ORDER. 



59 



Lieutenant Grant was never one to shirk. He felt that liis 
dut}' was in the field cjuite as nuich as in the camp and he 
was alwa\'s reach' to take his ijart in l)attle and on l)i\'ouac. 
So, as I have told you, he made a record for bravery and 






^ 



i^i 



-^'^M. 











GRANT KIPES FOR AMMUNITION AT MONTF.RKY. 



darin'j" that would ha\-e been rememljered e\en if his future 
had not been so ('■reat and <'lorious. 

It was Lieutenant Grant who, when the fiL;ht was raging' 
hotlv in the streets of Monterev, volunteered to ride back to 
General Taylor's headquarters and order up fresh ammu- 
nition for the American soldiers who were holding the town. 
He did so. Flin-'inL-- himself, Lidian fashion, or rather in 



6o HOJV THE LIEUTENANT MARCHED OVER THE BORDER. 

circus Style, upon his horse, with one heel in the cantle of 
his saddle and one hand graspini^- the horse's mane, the 
young lieutenant rushed his horse toward the gate ot the 
town, and swinging against the horse's side, rode the gaunt- 
let of fire and shot that blazed out from house-top and street 
corner, helping some wounded men on the way, leaping a 
four-foot wall so as to gain a short cut, and kept on until 
he trained the creneral's tent with his messa^:re. Yet all he 
finds io sa}- in his " Memoirs "of that daring gallop was, "my 
ride was an exposed one." 

It was Lieutenant Grant who, when his regiment was 
detached from General Taylor's command and joined to the 
little army of General Scott, marched and fought under that 
victorious leader from the sea-fortress of \YTa Cruz to the 
capital city of Mexico, never missing a battle and yet always 
faithful to his dutv as care-taker for his rei?'iment. 

He chased the flNim*' Mexicans out of the bewilderimj 
ditches of the farm of San Antonio; he was in the rush that 
stormed and carried the church-fortress of Cherubusco; he 
left his commissary-wagons to take part in the fierce fight at 
Chepultepec, the "West P(^int " of Mexico, so gallanth' de- 
fended by the Mexican cadets ; he was one of the leaders of 
the ijallant band that burst into the louij- low stone buildin*'- 
of Molino del Rey — "the king's mill" — and won his pro- 
motion to a first lieutenant's commission, first by brevet for 
braverv and. later, to full rank, by the death of his senior. 

Then came the final attack on the cai)ital and the cap- 



IlOir THE J.1I:L J I:\A.\T M.IRCJIKD Ol'KR THE BORDER. 6i 

lure of the city ot Mexico. In this struL;!^le Lieutenant 
Cjiant Ijuie aw acti\e part; tor it was lan^eh' due to his 
good juclL;iiKnl and coolness that a speedy entraiK e into the 
cit\' w a.s gained by the ^Vniericans. 

It seems that while he was niarchin- with one part of 
General Scott's army to attack the northern entrance to the 




^i:wJt' 






\fc;.. 




'^V]v-Y-iii*-^-^^^V^ 



CHEPULTEPEC — THE " WE5T POINT OF MEXICO. 

city, called the San Cosme Gate, he thought he saw a way 
b\' which he could L;'et behind — or, as it is called, tlank, 
the Mexican soldiers who were drawn up to oppose the 
Americans. 

Lea\'in!^' the ranks — bv permission, of course — he 
jumped behind a stone wall, and going cautiously, got to a 



62 HOW THE LIEUTENANT MARCHED OVER THE BORDER. 

point where he could see just how the land lay and just how 
the enemy was placed. Then he ran back again without 
being seen, called for volunteers, and leading a dozen plucky 
soldiers who were ready to risk the danger, he and his 
men trailed arms under cover of the wall and thus getting 
behind the Mexicans drove them away from their battery 
and the house-tops from which they were firing at the 

Americans. 

Soon after this success, Lieutenant Grant, while looking 
for another chance to get the best of the Mexicans came 
upon a little church standing by itself back from the road. 
This church, he noticed, stood not far from the city walls ; 
its belfry, he believed, was just in line with the space behind 
the citv gate. " If I could only get a cannon into that bel- 
fry," he said, " I could send some shot in among the Mexican 
soldiers behind the gate and scatter them." 

It was a ljri<'-ht idea. " I'll try it." he said to himself. 

No sooner said than done. Hurrying back to the 
American ranks, Lieutenant Grant got hold of a small light 
cannon, called a mountain howitzer, and some men who 
knew how to work it. They dodged the enemy, cut across 
a field and made a bee-line for the little church. 

There were several wide and deep ditches in this held; 
but the men took the howitzer apart, and each one carrying a 
piece of it thev waded the ditches until, at last, ihev reached 
the church without being seen ])y the enemy. The priest who 
was in charcre of the church was not going to let the Ameri- 



I 



t 




I/OW Till': J.IFA'TK.\.\Xr .^r.lRCJIED Ol'ER THK BOKDKR. 65 

can soldiers come in, but youn-^' Grant told him, " I think 
yon w ill. We're comini; in." And they did. 

Piece by piece the cannon was carried u[) into the belfry, 
put together again, loaded and aimed directly at the Mexi- 
cans who were i-uardinij' the San Cosme jjate, less than a 
thousand feet away. 

P)an"'- ! went the howitzer I-)an«'' ! banj/ ! it went ai:ain. 
You ma\' well believe that those Mexicans were a surprised 
lot. wlun the cannon balls bei^^an dropping' down among 
them. At first, they could not imagine where the shots 
came from, and when they did they were so confused, that 
instead of sending soldiers to surround and capture this 
battery in a belfry, they simply made haste to get out 
of the way of those dropping cannon-balls as quickly as 
possible. 

Of course, the Americans noticed this " embattled church- 
steeple," too. 

"That's a bricfht idea," said deneral Worth, and he sent 
a young lieutenant named Pemberton — who had something 
special to do with General Grant later in life — to bring the 
man w ith the bright idea before him. 

So Lieutenant Grant reported what he had done to Gen- 
eral Worth and the general told him to keep at it and take 
another gun up into the steeple, too. lUit as there was onl\- 
room for one gun in that steeple, (irant could not use 
another, even if he wished to. I^)Ut, as he explained, years 
after, he coukln't tell General Worth that, because it wasn't 



66 HOJV THE LIEUTEXAXT MARCHED OVER THE BORDER. 



proper for a youni^- lieutenant to contradict the commanding 
general when he said '' put two guns in the steeple." 

Well, it was a \'ery bright idea — that battery in a steeple, 
was it not? And, as it helped open the way for the capture 

of the Mexican capital, it 
also broui/ht to the \()une 
lieutenant fame and promo- 
tion. 

He really did not care 
very much about the first; 
for, as you know, Ulysses 
Grant was a quiet and mod- 
est young fellow who did 
not care a rap for show, and 
\Aas never one to push him- 
self forward. But his good 
work in that church steeple 
had been noticed by his 
superior oftlcers, and in three 
different reports of the cap- 
ture of Mexico, Lieutenant 
Grant's share received honorable mention. 

This, in due time, brought him promotion — something 
that everyone likes — boy or girl, scholar, clerk c^r sc^ldier. 
But things always went a bit sl(n\- with this slow-going 
young man, and while he had plenty o\ \\o\V to do as com- 
missary and adjutant of his regiment, the war did nc^t push 




THE HATTKRV IN IHK STEEPLE. 



J/Oir TllK J.IKiTJiy.l.XT MARCIIIiD OVER THE BORDER. C7 

him rapidly on towards General Scott's position — about 
which, )()ii nnu-iiihcr, he had a [)rcscntinient or dream w hen 
he was a \\\st Point cadet. lie went into the battle of 
Palo Alto, which opened the war, a second lieutenant; six- 
teen months later when he marched into the city of Mexico 
as one ot the \-ictorious Americans, he was still a second 
lieutenant, althoui^h he had been in almost every battle and 
belonged to a rej^iment that lost many officers. Somehow, 
success was alwavs slow in comin'>-, or niissed altogether in 
Grant's early days. But this, you know, teaches a boy 
patience, especially if a young- fellow is determined, conscien- 
tious and persistent. U. S. Grant was all of these, even as 
a boy, you know; so delay schooled him and brought him 
experience, cautiousness, firmness and that other quality 
which some folks call stubbornness, but which we know 
was, in his case, persistence. 

Promotion did come however, soon after the American 
soldiers were in possession of the city of Mexico. His gal- 
antry in the church steeple and the way in which he always 
did his duty were not forgotten, and when a vacancv was 
made by the death of one of his superior officers, Grant went 
up a step and was made first lieutenant of his regiment — 
the Fourth U. S. Infantry. 

There was not much more fighting after that, but the 
American soldiers held possession of the citv of Mexico sev- 
eral months longer, remaining in the land until the treatv of 
peace between Mexico and the I'nited States was si-'ned. 



68 HOW THE LIEUTENANT MARCHED OVER THE BORDER. 



on the second of February, 1848. This is known as the 
" Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo," from the name of the place 
where the treaty was drawn up. By it, the United States 
obtained complete possession of Texas, New Mexico and 
California. 

Lieutenant Grant had nothing to do with this treaty — 




rilh CAl Hl.lJRAl, IN I 111-. CITY OF MtXlCU. 



his dav for being the central hgure in great events and in a 
greater treaty had not yet come — but he found plenty to 
do as care-taker (^\ his regiment. lie was still (piartermaster 
and he had his hands full. It is no small thing to look after 
the food and clothes of se\eral hundred nien, as the young 
lieutenant had long since discovered. 

This question of clothes was a serious one. The soldiers 



IfOir THE LIEUTEXAXT MARCHED Ol'ER THE Ji ORDER. 69 



were GfettincT racfijfocl after tlicir months of scr\'icc. Xo 



clothiiiij' was sent thcni hy the <'-overnment and sonu-thin'>- 
had to Ije clone. So cloth was purchased of the Mexican 
merchants, and Mexican tailors were employed to make it 
up into " Yankee uniforms." Lieutenant Grant had to see 
to eettine' these new suits for all the men of his reirinient. 
and as there were always more soldiers needing clothes than 
there were clothes ready for the soldiers, you can see that he 
was kept pretty busy "taiU^ring." 

Then the money gave out which was needed for the pay- 
ment of the military band. Now music is almost as neces- 
sary for keeping up the spirits and discipline ot the soldiers 
as food and clothing". The musicians in the United States 
armv at the time of the Mexican war, were paid but a little 
bv the government ; the rest of their pay came from a sort 
of soldiers' savings bank known as the regimental fund. 
This fund had got pretty low down; it needed to be in- 
creased if the soldiers were to have good music, so Grant set 
himself to thinkiuLf things over. 

As a result he went to work bread-making. 

You see a hundred pounds of tlour will make one hun- 
dred and fortv pounds of bread. Grant was allowed to draw- 
flour for his men and this left quite an amount on his hands 
— forty pounds out of every one hundred and forty. He 
rented a bakery, hired Mexican bakers, bought fuel and 
other bake-shop needs and ran a bread-bakery to supply the 
armv with bread. He did this so well that, out (^ the 



70 HOW THE LIEUTENANT MARCHED OVER THE BORDER. 

profits of that extra forty pounds in every one hundred and 
forty, he paid the musicians of the Fourth Infantry and 
increased the slender regfimental fund — which meant com- 
forts and even luxuries for his soldiers. 

All this of course kept him pretty busy. But he found 
time to climb up the volcano of Popocatapetl, that is "the 
smoking mountain." 

You can lind this in your geography, on the map of 
Mexico. It is a great volcano, you know, nearly eighteen 
thousand feet high, and the party of climbers were almost 
lost in a dreadful storm of wind and snow that came down 
on them. One of that party of volcano-climbers was to 
bring fame to Grant later in life — Captain Buckner, who in 
the Civil War commanded Fort Donelson and brouo'ht from 
Grant the famous words " unconditional surrender." Later 
still. Buckner was one of the pall-bearers at the funeral of 
the great soldier whom he helped to fame and who was his 
companion in that fearful climb up the smoking mountain. 

So the time passed pleasantly enough in Mexico with 
this young lieutenant, because he was kept busy. To do 
nothing, you know, is the hardest kind ot work, and L . S. 
Grant was never a do-nothing. 

He looked after all his regimental duties, and enjoyed 
his spare lime in " poking alxnit " seeing sights. Tw ice on 
these sight-seeing trips he was made prisoner by the Mexi- 
cans, l)ut was allowed to cro free because there was then no 
fighting — 'Or what is calleil a truce between the tw o re|)ublics. 



//Oir THE I.Il-.UTEXAXT MARCH ED OVER 77/E JiORDhR. 71 

Besides climbiiiL;' ro[)ocatapL'tl, he explored tombs and 
ruins ot the old Aztecs, the Mexicans w honi Cortez the Sjjan- 
iard conquered, you remember, in the davs after Columbus; 
he \-isited the wonderful "great caves " of Mexico, and went 




HULL FIGHT IN MKXILO. 



to sec a bull flight. This, you know, is the favorite national 
sport of Mexico, just as baseball and football are with us. 
But (iranl didn't like it. lie unl\- went to one — and one 



72 HO IV THE LIEUTENANT MARCHED OVER THE BORDER. 

was enough. It made him sick, he said. For Grant, I 
must tell you, although the greatest of American soldiers, 
could not bear the siq-ht of blood, and hated anvthin<>" like 
brutality. Other ijTeat soldiers ha\-e been like him in this. 
So the bull-fighting disgusted him, and he said he could not 
see how human beings could enjoy the sufferings of beasts 
and often of men, as they seemed to do on these occasions. 

But more than in sight-seeing, fighting and care-taking, 
the Mexican war was for Ulysses S. Grant a splendid 
school and a most helpful experience. In it, he learned to 
be a soldier, to endure |)rivation, to have patience, to know 
men and, especially, to become acquainted with those who, a 
few years after, were to play a prominent part upon a stage 
on which he was to be chief actor. 

Grant never failed to acknowledge the o'reat advantaere 
that his experience in the Mexican war brought him. He 
learned to know bv name or in person almost all the officers 
who rose to positions of leadership, on one side or the other, 
in the great Civil War. lie was an observing man, he 
studied people and saw their good points and their weak ones 
and he knew just what sort of men were his old comrades 
of the Mexican war, when, in after \'ears, he was either 
associated w itli them as commander or opposed to them as 
conqueror. 

There is no better school, bovs and <'"irls, than the school 
ot experience; and in that school I lysses S. lirant was an 
aj)t, if a slow and often a worried pupil. 



HO IV Jlh: J- OUGHT THE TLAGUK AT J'AAAMA. 73 



ciiArri: K \\. 

HOW Hi: I-OUGHl IHl' I'LAGUE AT PANAMA. 

THE first thin!4 that Lieutenant Grant did when he went 
marehing home from the war w ith Mexico was to get 
a four nKMiths' lea\-e of aljsence, or \aeation, hurry to St. 
Louis and be married. This important date in his life — 
his wedcHng dav — w:is the twenty-second of August, 1848. 

lie married Julia Dent, the St. Louis girl of whom I 
ha\e alreatlv spoken, and a splendid wife she made him. 

The wedding took place at the farmhouse, in which lived 
the parents of Julia Dent. It was ten miles below St. Louis 
and was a big. roomy, hospitable old Southern mansion with 
great rooms, ample fireplaces, broad verandas and pleasant 
grtnmds. and as it stood then it stands to-day, only slightly 
alteretl. 

The young couple did not go to housekeeping in St. 
Louis, nor could the}' make their home in the big and breezy 
Dent mansion. Julia Dent was a "soldier's bride," and a 
soldier is ne\er his own master. II is home is " in barracks" 
or " cjuarters " at \vhate\'er point or place he is ordered to 
e'(>. So his wife. too. had to li\-e with him in barracks — 
that is. you know, in the soldier's quarters at some fort or 
garrison, or military post. 



74 IfOlV HE F0UGH2 THE PLAGUE AT PANAMA. 

So, after the honeymoon had been spent in \isiting- the 
Grant familv or the Grant relatives in Ohio, the vouno- 
lieutenant and his wife, when his vacation days were over, 
went back to duty. He joined his regiment, and his wife 
went with him. 

At the close of the Mexican war, Grant's regiment — the 
Fourth U. S. Infantry, you know — went into camp at Pas- 
cagoula in Mississippi. There the lieutenant left it when 
he went off to St. Louis to be married ; but, before his four 
months' vacation was over, the Fourth U. S. Infantry was 
ordered to the military post of Sackett's Harbor on the 
shores of Lake Ontario. Ouite a change from the Gulf of 
Mexico, was it not? 

There, in the Madison Barracks at Sackett's Harbor, 
Lieutenant Grant and his wife began their married life. In 
their rooms in the officers' quarters they spent their first 
Christmas. 

In the spring of the next year, however, 1849, orders 
came to move. The regiment was transferred to Detroit in 
Michicran. In this beautiful northern citv — not as attractive 
then as it is to-da\', I imagine — they lived for nearlv two 
years, when again came the order to move. 

This time, in the spring of 1S51. they went back once 
more to their first home, the Madison Barracks at Sackett's 
Harbor, followin*'" their resjiment. 

You see, by this, that a soldier and his wife can never 
hope to make their home long in one place. A small army, 



now ///•: rOLGIlT the PLAdLK AT J'.tXA.U.t. 



75 



like that of tlic I'nitcd States, is sluiflk-il and shitted about 
almost as much as nou shuflle the cards w hen pla\ing )(jur 
jjame of "Authors." Uncle Sam's blue-coats of the rei^^ular 
arm\' ne\er know how lou!^ the\' ai\- L;oin^' to "stay fixed." 

So it came about that, before the I^'ourth I'nited States 
Infantry had been in the Madison liarracks at Sackett's Har- 
bor a \ ear, orders ai^ain came to the soldier to move. 

This time it fairly tuok their breath away; the rei^nment 
was ordered to Cal- 
ifornia. That would 
not sound S(^ \ery 
remarkable in these 
davs when we can 
rush across the con- 
tinent from the At- 
lantic to the Pacific 








,j rw''^'- ---■ 



J 



THE DANr.F.ROUS TRIP "OVERLAND IN "THE FIFTIES. 



in six days. But in 1.S51 \cry few people went by lantl 
across the continent. There were no railroads ; people had 
to ride in slow, lumberinj^- wagons, or on horseback — or 
walk ! and the journe\' of three thousand miles took weeks 
and months, that were sl(W\-. tircs(^me anil danp^erous. There 
were mountains to climb, deserts to cross, rivers to wade, 
Indians to face and wild beasts to fii.,dit. Hunger and thirst, 
heat and cold, rain and snow and all the discomforts of life 
were a part of the tlail\' experience of the traveller and the 
emigrant. It was a terrible journey to go overland to the 
Pacific in the davs before the railroads. 



76 



HOJV HE FOUGHT THE PLAGUE AT TAX AM A. 



So, people preferred going by water. This was not always 
agreeable, either; Ijut, you see, it was a case of the longest 
way round Ijeing the shortest way home. Travellers to Cali- 
fornia went by steamboat from New York to Aspinwall on 
the Isthnuis of Panama; then they crossed the Isthmus by 
boat and mule, went on board another steamer at Panama 
and sailed up the Pacific to San Francisco. It was a long, 























.^-, 






TARGET PRACTICE IN U. S. A. EAKKACKS. 



hard, tedious and often dangerous journe\-; but it was not 
nearly so difficult nor dangerous as the wa\' owrland. 

But when the orders to sfo to California came to the sol- 
diers at Sackett's Harbor. Lieutenant Grant decided that he 
would not take his young wife on such a long, hni'd and 
uncertain journey. He did not intend to live in Calif(^rnia, 
and \\h(^ could tell how long the regiment would be cpiar- 
tered there? Orders mi'-ht come sendiiv' 1dm somewhere 



I/OJr ///-; 1-0 1 GUT TJIK J'/.AGL'E AT /'.t.WlAf.l. 



77 



else, c\tn before lie and his wife had really " ^ot settled,'* 
and the lon^' j(nirnev woidd \n- all toi' nothing,''. 

So he aiianj^ed to \\[\w his wife \isit his people in Ohio 
antl her people in St. Louis, proniisini;' that when he had been 
in Califoiiiia Ion-' enoii'-h to see how he liked it, he woidd 
arrange either to send for her or get leave of absence and 
come east for her. 

So it was arranged; the good-b\es were said; and on the 
fifth of Jidy. 1.S31, the Fourth Infantry, with such of the 
soldiers' wixes and children as could not or would not stay 
behind, >ailed out (>! the harbor ^i New York and steamed 
southward for their first port on the Isthmus o\ Panama. 
In eight days they sailed into the harbor of Aspinwall on 
the Atlantic side of the Isthmus and prepared to go ashore. 

Jid\" on the Isthmus of Panama is wet, hot and sicklv. 
The passengers from the north felt the changes from drench- 
ing rain to Ijurning sun and suffered from them greatly. 
'1 hev were vcrv anxious to be on their wav north a^^ain to a 
healthier climate. 

But the Isthmus had to be crossed. It looks small and 
narrow enough on tlu- map. does it n(^t ? In one ]iart it is 
only thirty miles from ocean to ocean. But it is altoi/ether 
too wide if one feels sick and has no way to get across except 
to ride horseback or walk. 

To-day, a railroad, fort\-eight miles lon-j", runs across the 
Isthmus from Aspinwall on the Atlantic to Panama on the 
Pacitic. P)Ut. when Lieutenant (xrant and his infantrymen 



78 



HOW HE FOUGHT THE PLAGUE AT PANAMA. 












^^.: 



crossed the Isthmus in \>>^\, this railroad had but just been 
commenced and onl\' ran a tew miles, to the banks of the 
Chagres river. This is the stream, vou know, which cneri- 
necrs for more than three hundred years have been tryins^;" 
to turn into a ship canal that should join the Atlantic and 
the Pacific — the famous ditch known as the Panama canal. 
When Lieutenant Grant and his seven hundred compan- 
ions of the Fourth Infantry started to cross the Isthmus they 

had a fearful time. 
Grant was cjuarter- 
master or "care-taker " 
of his refjiment, vou 
know, and had to look 
out for the comfort 
and transportation of 
the men. This Isth- 
mus journey put his 
ability to the test. 
First, he saw them all on board the cars for the thirty 
mile ride by railway. When the road ended, at the Cha^res 
river, thev " chan^red for Gon-ona " and went on board ccr- 
tain iiat-bottomed boats that would earr\- between thirl)- and 
fortv passeni^'crs apiece. These boats were poled aloni;' the 
river, ai^ainst the current — six polemen to a boat — at the 
rapid rate of a mile an houi"! 

In this wa\', thev pti>hed on to a place called Gor- 
eona where the\- had to <'et out a^-ain for a ride ow mule- 










/^ 



THE MARCH ACROSS THE ISTHMUS. 



J/Oir HE I-OL'GHT THE r/.AGC'E AT r.LWtM.t. 79 

back to TaiKiiiKi mh the Pacific, sonic twenty- fixe miles 
distant. 

Did \(ni c\"er hcai' of :i harder ht't\-inile tiip ? 'I'o-ehi)", 
in the conitoriahle cars of the I'anania railioad, nou can 
make the tiip across the Isthmus in three hours. It took 
Lieutenant (irant and his companx' marly two weeks to do 
that hft\' miles. I will tell you w h)-. 

The United States !j()Vernment had arrans/cd with the 
steamship company for the connecteil and comtortable trans- 
portation oi the F(^urth Infantry and its l)ag"gage from 
New \'ork to San Francisco, including the trip across the 
Isthmus. 

The officers and soldiers, with the families of a t'ew of 
the latter, made up a comi)an\' oi se\en hundred people. 
lUit. in iS-i, crowds of aclxenturers were going" to California 
to di<'- for ''old. So the seven hundred, instead of havin-'' 
Comfortable cpiarters, were crowded upon a steamer alread\' 
fullv occupied. And when Aspinwall was reached everyone 
was in a hurrv to ''ct across the Isthmus to Panama and 
the Pacific. The passengers on the steamer had first chance 
and the soldiers simply had to wait for " second turn." 

A part of the regiment did, after a few days* delay, get 
across to Panama ; but (irant, as regimental (juartermaster, 
was left at a place called Cruces on the l)anks oi the sickly 
Chagres river with all the baggage and cam[) ec|uipage, one 
company oi soKliers and those men o\ the regiment who 
had brou'-ht their wives and children with them. 



8o HOW HE FOUGHT THE PLAGi'E AT PAX A MA. 

There at Graces they waited. The transportation prom- 
ised In' the steamship company (Hd not come ; a man with 
whom a new contract had been made by the agents of the 
steamship compan\- kept promising mules and horses, but 
after a day or two Grant discovered that this man had been 
supplying them to passengers who could pay higher than the 
contract price, and the young quartermaster found out that 
if he were ever to get his people and baggage to Panama, he 
would have to find the means himself. 

Then came the climax. The dreadful cholera — that 
plague of hot countries — broke out in the camp. Lieutenant 
Grant had sickness and death to struggle with, in addition to 
his other worries. For cholera in July, in the Isthmus of 
Panama, with sultrv, rain\' weather and insufficient shelter 
for the sick, means death. 

Did you ever read Dickens's story of " Martin Ghuzzle- 
w it ? "" Do you remember Mark Tapley who always " came 
out stron<si' " when thing's \\ere at their worst ? There was a 
good deal of this spirit in the quartermaster of the Fourth 
U. S. Infantry. 

With a rc^npanv of plague-stricken men and women to 
care for, with no means of removing them to a place of 
safet)-, w ilh insufficient accommodation for either the sick or 
the well, with disappointment as to unkept jM'omises dela\'ing 
and worr\-in*'' him, with half-hostilr Indians all about his 
camp, and with food growing scarce and distress staring 
him in the face, ( )uartermaster Grant had certainh' a hard 



noil' HE roLGHT Tin-: plagle at pax a ma. 



8i 



prol)kiii U) solve. IkiL he coolly locjkcil dt all the chances, 
set his teeth to-ethcr, and made up his mind to work the 
thin*"- out himself. 

lie sent his last company of soldiers and the doctors on, 
hv f(^ot. to Panama. Then he took entire charge of the 
choh ra camp and, for over a week, he fought the plague des- 
peratei}' and un- ^, , 



// 







HE CARKl) FOR THF. SICK AND FOUGHT THE PLAGUE. 



tlinchin''l\'. lie 
cared for the sick, 
buried the dead, 
kept one eye on 
the halfdiostile 
Indians, tried in 
e\er\- wav to 
arrange for some 
kind o{ transpor- 
tation to Pana- 
ma, and kept things going as briskly and as cheerfully 
as he could, stubbornlv resolved not to o-ive in. He was 
bus\' all the time. POr a week he diil not take off his clothes 
and scarcelv allowed himself any rest — working, nursing, 
striving, in the niidst of the plague that brought weakness 
and dealli from the forest and the swamp. 

Of one hundred and hftv men. women and children in 
that cholera-stricken camp on the Chagres river. full\- one 
third dietl before that week of terror came to an end. But 
Grant never gave up. 



82 HO IV HE FOUGHT THE PLAGLE AT PAX A MA. 

Finding' that the agents and promi-^cs of the steamship 
compan\" were not to be relied upon, and that if his sick and 
his ba^'ira^e were ever to '-et to the Pacilic he nuist ^et 
them there himscH', he took all the responsibility and set to 
work on his o^^•n hook. He hired mules and litters at twice 
the price offered by the steamship company, engaged Indians 
to bury the dead and pack on the mules the camp belong- 
ings, and at last took up his march to the Pacific, bringing 
evervthing with him, excepting alas ! the victims whom the 
cholera had claimed as its own in that plague-spot in the 
Panama forests. 

I have lingered over this brief happening in the life of 
U. S. Grant because it has always seemed to me a key to 
his character; it prepares us to see in tlds quiet, determined, 
self-reliant voung quartermaster, sending all his available 
help away and grimly remaining to fight the plague and 
care for the people and property under his charge, the pre- 
face to that soldier and ruler of later years, whom the poet 
Lowell described as, 

" One of those still, plain men that do the world's rough work.'" 

There is no doubt, is there. al)out that work in the 
Panama cholera-camp being rough indeed? 

Earlv in Septendjer the Fourth Infantr\- sailed through 
the Golden Gate and entered upon its garrison life in 
California. 

Those were exeitine: davs in the great Western state. 
It was onlv a territorv thc^n — a wist track c^f Ininl. stretch- 



6 C 






=^ T. 

if " 



I > 



a > 







HOW ///•; i-orcirr iiii: ri .ir.ri: at j'.wama. 85 

ing" ahms^'- the l^acific and recently ac([uire(l from Mexico. 
1)111 it was fast filliii;^ up. The won! had (^'■one abroad that 
gijKl was to be had just tor the dii^gin^- oi' the wa>hinL;' in 
the land and streams of California. People fnmi all parts 
of the world, in a hurry to got rich, rushed to California to 
beconic gold-miners. 

There were all sorts and conditions of men among them, 
and while most of them ilid not get rich, they did make 
thinsjs li\'el\- for a while on that far Pacific coast. For men 
who faile<l t(^ find gold had to find work or starve. They 
Jiad to do somethinor. It was "hard lines" iox many a 
stout-hearted vouns/ fellow, and that mining life in Cali- 
f(^rnia was full oi temptation, danger, risk and struggle. 
Put these are the things \\ hich, bravely faced, help to make 
men. Onlv the plucky and strong ones did win the fight; 
but their labors and exertions, their defeats and successes 
helped to build mighty states in that far western land and 
to lay the foundations upon which the republic rose to 
<'Teatness. 

It was in such a school as this that V . S. Crant learned 
anew the lessons of foresight, deterniination and watchful- 
ness that guided him S(^ well in later times o\ need. Those 
were days, he himself tells us, " that l)rought out character," 
and, in his case, each new experience strengthened a charac- 
ter that was to mean -''reat thinijs for his nati\e land. 

He lived in barracks with his regiment — at Penicia. 
not far from San PTancisco ; at P'ort Wincouver on the 



85 



BO IV HE FOUGHT THE PLAGUE AT PANAMA. 



Columbia river, in the southern part of what is now the 
state of W'ashin-ton ; and at Humboldt Bay, near to 
the town of Eureka, in northern California. 

He found a soldier's life in times of peace, even in that 
new and unsettled land of gold, lazy, unprofitable and 
unpromising-. He never really did like a soldier's life, you 
know. "I never liked service in the army — not as a young 

officer," he said, years 
after ; he always declared 
that he was more a farm- 
er than a fighter. So, 
when he came to look 
carefully at his chances he 
could not see any future 
or prosperity for him it 
he remained in the army. 
And yet, as you all know, 
it was the army that was 
to make him great ! 
But, as he thou-ht it all over, there in California, he 
lon^'-ed to see the wife and children he had lett in "the 
states." as folks then called the East; he knew that his pay 
as a soldier was too small to support a family, and he dared 
not take the risk of bringing them so far from home. So 
he concluded to resign, leave the army and go into some 
<Tood business in w iiieh he could lu)|)e to make money and 
win success. 




COI.U WEATHER SENTRY DUTY, IN liAKRACKS. 




A HARD ROAD TO TRAVEL. 
Chrr ih( motnitiiiiis in golii-miuin;^ days in Califcirnta. 



now II K I'Oi'GIIT Till'. I'LA(;LE AT PAXAMA. 89 

He liked California, and. for many years afler he left it, 
he ho[)ecl some chi\ to l^o baek and make that splendid state 
his home. lUit Ik- frit that hr must first get a good start in 
life; so, in Mareh, 1^54, he resigned from the army and 
went home aijain. 

]^.\'er since the da\' when, in the belfry of the Mexican 
chinch, he' had bombarded the city of Mexico with his bat- 
ter\' oi one gun, he had been a captain b\' bre\'et, but not in 
rank or pav. In Jul\-, i''^53. the death of an officer left a 
\'acanl place, and as the other officers moved up towards the 
head the lieutenant became a captain. So, when he resigned 
from the armv and went home, he was Captain Grant. You 
see how slowly things went in times of peace. He had to 
wait six \ ears for the i)romised promotion to captain. 

For eleven years had U. S. Grant been a soldier of the 
republic. Slow in speech and action, except when action 
was absolutely necessarw more bra\e than brilliant, and a 
worker rather than a " show " soldier, he was alwavs to be 
depended upon it anything needed to be done. He never 
shirked his duty because it was not a pleasant t)ne, and if he 
saw that a tiling must be clone he stuck to it until it was 
done. 

The same strategv that, as a bo\-, he displaved in liftimr 
and loading the great stone in Cieori/etown. he exhibited as 
a lieutenant in the church tower in Mexico ; the same pluck 
and grit that helped the bo\- dri\e home the balkv horse he 
had purchased, ser\-ed the man in his daring ride for ammu- 



9° 



HO IV THE CAPTAIN FOUXD LIFE A -HARD SCRABBLED 



nition through the streets of Monterey and in the grim grap- 
ple with the plague in the forests of Panama. These, and 
such experiences as these, were the foundation of that stern, 
silent, determined, unxiclding effort that made this quiet 
soldier the great captain — the future hero and victor in the 
republic's desperate struggle for life. 



CHAPTER V. 



HOW THE CAPTAIN FOUND LIl E A " HARD SCRABBLE. 



OO Ulysses gave up fighting for farming. It was not 
*^ altogether a successful exchange, so far as results 
went. Captain Grant had never been able to save much 
out of his pay as a soldier — never very large; and eleven 
years of soldiering are not a very good preparation for tarm- 
in<''. He would have to i^et his liviuQ- cnit of the (ground 
now, and he knew that, like Adam the first farmer, " in the 
sweat of his face he must eat bread." 

That means hard w(^rk. of ctnirse; and hard work indeed 
our ex-soldier found it to make both ends meet. He was 
never afraid of hard work either as ho\ or man. and what he 
set his liand to do, he did " w ith his mii-lit." as the Bible 



J/0 IV THE CAPTAIN FOLWJ) ///■/■ A -HARD SCRAHBLEr 91 

sa\s. But even the hardest worker docs not always make a 
success of tliiiv^s. and this was to be the experience of the 
soldici" from the- l^acifie. 

When he kmded in New York, on his homeward trip 
from San Francisco by the way of Panama, he had little or 
no money, and a man whom he had once helped and upon 
whom he depended for a return not onl\- refused to pay him 
but ran off alto^^ether. So the poor captain had to write to 
his father in Ohio for he!p to get home. 

His people were of course delighted to see him again; 
but when, at last, late in the summer of 1854, he was once 
more with liis wife and children at St. Louis, he found that 
he must face the world sturdily if he were to get his own 
li\in<'" and that, at thirtv-two, he had actually to begin life 
over again ; " a new struggle for our support," he calls it, 
and a struL-i-le indeed it was. 

Mrs. Grant's father had given her part of his Whitehaven 
acres as a farm, (^n this. Captain Grant decided to l)uild a 
house and go to farming. 

He had no house to live in and no money with which to 
stock the farm; but he set alxnit building the house ami 
hoped to raise enough on his farm to gradually pay for live- 
stock and farm-tools. 

He did most of the housed)uilding himself. All he could 
do was to put up a log cabin, and he carted the stones for 
the cellar, hauled the logs for the walls and split the shingles 
for the roof. He had a few negroes to helj) him. but he was 



92 HOW THE CAPTAIN FOUND LIFE A ''HARD SCRABBLE." 

his own mason and carpenter, except when it came to the 
" raising," and at this the neighbors helped. 

It was not very much of a house, I imagine; but then 
nobody expects all the conveniences in a log cabin and, 
humble as it was, his home-made log house was home — and 



^ 



?T 














"captain r.RANT FOUN'I) OUT WlIAl' WORK RKAI.I.V WAS." 



you know, as John Howard Payne's beautiful song tells us, 
" Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home." 

But long before he an(] his family were settled in their 
log-built home. Captain Grant had found out what work 
really was. He had learned how hard it was to squeeze a 
living out of the ground. He discovered that raising pota- 



HOir THE C.t/'7A/X JOUXD I./J'!'. A - IIAKD SCRABBLE. 



93 



toes and corn and wheat and cuttini;- conl-wood on a sixty- 
acre farm always meant liard work, hut docs not alwavs 
mean money cnoui^h to live on as one woidd like. 

As I told you, however, in my story of how Grant fouj^ht 
the plague at Panama, he had a good deal of the Mark Tap- 
ley spirit about him, and so, even while he saw what a hard 
row he had to hoe on his little farm, he saw the funn\- side 
of it too, and named his little place" llardscrabble." because, 
he said, he was certain to find life there "a hard scrabble." 

His sixty acres, as I have said, were good ground for corn 
and wheat and potatoes, and in its forest land he could cut a 
good many cords of wood. The log house at " Hardscrabble " 
w as set on a rise of i^^round and shaded bv a <^^rove of vouncr 
oaks. It was a pleasant spot, and Grant would have been 
very happ\- there with his wife and children if he had not 
been worried over money matters and often been sick with 
the fever and ague. That w ill make anyone feel mean and 
out-of-sorts. you know, and Grant had been a sufferer from 
that hot and shivery complaint ever since he had been a boy 
in Ohio. 

There was one thing he alwa\'s managed to ha\'e at 
" Hardscrabble " and that u as good horses. To have had poor 
ones would not have been like (irant; for he, \ou know, 
was always a horsedoxcr. And. at "Hardscrabble." he used 
to declare that, with his pet team of a grav and a l.)av, he 
could phnigh a deeper furrow and haul a heavier load of 
wheat or cord-wood than anv other farmer around. 



9+ HOJV THE CAPTAIN FOUND LIFE A -HARD SCRABBLE." 



For, you see, he was his own teamster. And when 
times were especially hard and money was slow in comini^-, 
he would load up his wood team and driving into town 
Avould peddle his fire-wood from door to door. 

From this, you can be certain that there was about Cap- 
tain Grant no such thing as false pride. He was ready to 




GRANT AS A WouD-PEDDLER. 



do anvthinij' that was honest work, no matter how humble. 
Rut not the most tempting opportunitx' could ever imluce 
him to do a dishonorable action. lie liatcd meanness as he 
chd King and swearing; and it is a splendid record for a 
man who has gone tlirough as much and had as manv ups 
and downs as he that, in all his e\'entful life, he nex'er did a 
mean action, never swore and never lied. Yet that is the 
record of V . S. Grant. 

He himself has said in no spirit of boasting — for Grant 




WITH THE GRAY AND THE BAY. 



now THE CAPTAJX J'OL'Xl) /.//A ./ -Il.ll.n SCRAHBLEr 97 

Wc'is never ci boaster — bill just tu illustrate a [KHut he was 
niakinj^, " I am ni>t aware (^f e\'cr haxini^' used a profane 
expletive in all \\\\ life." He told his boys so, too, and his 
eldest son declares that his father did not even use the sim- 
plest kind of boyish "swear words." When his father was 
a youni;- man, so this eldest son tells us, he did hear him say 
once o\\ a time " thunder and li''htnin<'- ! " But he savs that 
is about the onlv strong cxprcssic^n his father e\'er did use, 
and the fact that the soldier's son remembered it shows how 
unusual a thing it was. 

His record for honesty and truthfulness is known to all 
men and is dwelt upon by all persons who had anything to 
do with him in l)usiness or pleasure. 

" O, Sam Grant said it, did he?" they woidd sa\- at 
West Point. " Well, that settles it. If he said so, it's so." 

And meanness, which is very close to ungentlemanliness, 
is als(^ prett\- near to coarseness in talk or act. Not one of 
these found place in the character of V . S. ("".rant. He 
never said anvthing that approached coarseness, his son 
tells us. He ne\-er used vulgar words nor would he tell or 
listen to bad stories. He would get up and leax'e the room 
rather than hear them. And to do that, let me tell y«ni, 
takes real ccnirage. 

Do you wonder that, through all his life, men trusted him 
and respected him. even when things went hardest with 
him?' Do you wonder that, when the son from whom I 
ha\e (.[uoted grew to l)c a man, he said his father was his 



98 HOW THE CAPTAIX FOUXD LIFE A ''HARD SCRABBLE." 

ideal of all that is true and Ci'ood ? Do vou wonder that he 
savs to his own bov that the best he can wish for him is to 
be as good a man as his grandfather? 

" Mv father's character," he savs, " was what I believe a 
eood Christian teacher would consider the ideal one. He 
was pure in thought and deed. He was careful of the feel- 
ings of others — so much so, in fact, that when he had to 
do anvthing to hurt them. I believe he felt more pained 
than the people \\hom he hurt." 

This is an excellent reputation to have, is it not? And 
in the case of Ulysses Grant it is one that all men acknowl- 
edge as trulv merited. It be^an with him even as a bov in 
the Ohio tanyard ; under the hard experience of life at Hard- 
scrabble and the years that followed it was testeti bv adver- 
sity and became at last the calm, self-controlled, fearless, yet 
at the same time tender and sympathetic nature that won, 
by unl^ending will and bv equalh' determined clemencw in 
the terrible warfare that closed at Appomattox. 

There is no " fire of adversitv." as we call it, that is so 

trvin*'' and tormenlin-'- as not beim*- able to " «?'et alomr." 
Failure is a terrible blow to a man's good opinion of him- 
self — indeed, it is so to a boy's, too. 

Captain Grant had a se\ere schooling in failure after he 
left the army. S(^mehow. as \\'c sa\-, things did not seem tc^ 
go his way. 

He could not make farming pay; few men can, when 
aloncf comes sickness to take all the strength and aml>iti(Mi 



IlOir THE C.lJT.l/X /'XH'\/> I./ll: .1 -HARD SCRAJUil.Er 99 

out of thcni — as diil the fever and ix'gWd with Captain Grant. 
llaiiliiiL^ fire-\vooi.l ten miles to town and peddlin;^- it from 
door to door at four dollars a rord will not put uuk h money 
in a man's pocket, especiall}' w hen he has a i^^rowinj^' family 
to support. 

So, after three \'ear's trial at farmin;^, when he saw that 
he was runniuij' behind each \ear, when he tound himself 
weakened by continuous fever and aijue, two thousand dol- 
lars in debt to his father, and. thouijh steadil\- industrious, 
Still as steadil)- unsuccessful, he came to the conclusion that 
he was not cut out for a farmer and must try his hand at 
somethiuL;- else. 

Although he called " Ilardscrabblc " his home he had 
not lived there all the time. Once he left the cabin to take 
charge of the house of his brother-indaw un the Graxois 
road. It was a neat Gothic cottage and was called " W'ish- 
ton-wish" — I wonder if that name was gi\en it because of a 
certain tale b\' a <>Teat American stor\'-teller ? Do vou know 
w hieh one ? 

In 1S56 the Grants moved into Wdiitehax'en — the man- 
sion belonging to Mrs. Grants father. Captain Grant was 
to look after the place; but he still called " Ilardscrabblc " his 
home, and \\ hen at last the fe\er and ague would ncjt let 
him continue as a farmer and he determined to make a 
change, he was obliged to sell "Ilardscrabblc" and its 
belonginsjs so as to raise a little monev. 

Life had been a struggle there, certainly. But even up- 



lOO 



HO IV THE CAPTAIX FOUXD LIFE A '' HARD SCRABBLEr 



hill work may have its pleasures. Years after, walking over 
the old place one day, General Grant pointed out some 
stumps sticking up in the farmland and said, " I moistened 
the ground around those stumps with many a drop of sweat. 
But they were happy days, after all," he added. 

When the persistent fever and ague had so weakened 




- -^ . ^ - 

UARDSCKABBLt," THt COTTAGE THAT GRANT RUILl' FOR HIMSELF IN MISSOURI. 



him that he felt obliged to change his way of life, his wife's 
family, the Dents, found an opening for him in the real 
estate business in St. Louis. 

He formed a partnership with a real estate dealer, a man 
who buys and sells houses and lands, you know, (m- lends 
money to land-owners. This new firm was called Boggs t^ 



/row THF. C.-irTAIX JOCWI) LIFE A - HARD SCRABBLF.r loi 

Grant, and all the otVicc they hail was a desk in an old house 
on Tine Street in St. Louis. 

Captain (^irant did the writing;- and fig;uring, but he was 
not a real good hantl at " druniming up" business. A suc- 
cess! ul real estate agent nuist be what some folks in these 
busy days call a "hustler," and U. S. C.raiu was not cut out 
for work that called for a fast and ready talker. Vou know 
they called him, later on, "the silent man." 

So he did not succeed as a real estate agent. The firm of 
Boggs c^' Grant lasted only about a year. Then hard times 
came on, money was not easy to get, there was not business 
enough for two in the Pine Street office and Captain Grant 
gave it up. 

Although he had failed as a real estate agent he came 
out o{ the business with a spotless reputation. He might 
not be a business success, but he was a success as a man. 

"He was always a gentleman and everybody loved him, 
he was so gentle and considerate to everv one." the wife of 
his partner said of him. "But really we did not see what 
he could do in the world." 

That is the wa\- too many people look at v.hat thev call 
failure, isn't it? lUit failure is not alwavs not beinir able to 
do a thing in our way, you know. This lady li\-ed to learn 
w hat Grant could do when his great opportunit\- came. 

" Grant did not seem to be just calculated for business," 
savs one man who knew him in those hanl daws. " But a 
more honest, generous man never lived. I don't believe he 



102 HO IV THE CAPTAIN FOUND LIFE A ''HARD SCRABBLEr 

knew what dishonor was." That is even a finer record to 
have than to be set down as a "booming real estate specu- 
lator," is it not ? 

After Captain Grant gave up the real estate business, he 
tried hard to get the appointment as County lingineer. This 
is the man who looks after laying out roads and highways, 
and sees that boundaries and buildings are right. He should 
be a man who knows a good deal about mathematics and 
surveying. 

Captain Grant was just the man for such a position. 
But, too often, one who is trying to get such a place must 
have lots of friends to back him up, and he must have what 
is know n as political influence. This is not right, of course. 
The best man should always get the place, and a man's best 
recommendation for a position should Ije that he knows how 
to do the work. It is getting to be more this way in public 
life now-a-days, but when Captain Grant was trying to get 
the place as Countv Engineer, political intUience was the 
principal thing an applicant must have. 

So he did not get the appointment. He did get a small 
place in the Custom House at St. Louis; but tht^ next 
month the head man, or "Collector." died antl the new Col- 
lector put one of his own friends in (iranl's place. 

Did not the poor captain ha\"e a hard time o\ it? It did 
seem as if there realK' was nothin<j' for him to do. an\-where. 

Dav after dav he walked the streets of the cit\- tr\in-'- to 
tind work. Da\' after da\' he went home disai)pointeel. He 



JIOll' THE CAJ'TAIX FOUND LIJE A -HARD SCRABBLE. 



103 



h:ul to ni()\c into luiniblLT and cheaper (jiiartcrs ; he had to 
borrow money to live on ; he had no end of trouble, and at 
last he made up his mind to i;i\e up tr\ iug to i^et a foothold 
in a city w here e\er\ thim^^ seemed to be aijainst him. and !jo 
back to his father and the leather business. 

It was in the sprinj^of the year i.SOo that he came to this 
conclusion. Of course, it was a hard thinij to do. It is 
never easy for a man of spirit to ask favors or to depend 
upon others. 

But Cirant was ne\er a man to sit dow n and do nothin*''. 
lie would never ^ive up trying, and effort is half the battle. 
That was one secret of his success, as it is of anv bov or 
man who will ne\er admit defeat. Lack of success is one 
thing; Init loss o\ pluck is quite another; and this loss 
Grant never admitted. 

He did feel pretty blue over things, though. He had 
made a brave fight asj^ainst ill-fortune, and the battle seemed 
going against him because the opportunities, the strife and 
the surroundings in Missouri seemed more than he could 
master. In all that bi«'' Western citv there seemed to be no 
place for poor Captain Grant. 

But to-dav, where two </reat streets cross each other, in 
the busiest jxart of St. Louis, there stands a statue of the 
man who, so the world said, was a failure in St. Louis ; and 
the great citv in which he could not make a livin*'- honors 
antl reveres Idm to-da\- not onlv as a «'Teat American, but as 
one of the ercat citizens of St. Louis. 



I04 HO IV HE HEARD THE CALL TO DUTY. 

But he could have no idea of that in i860, when there 
seemed no possible way for him to get along there. 

" I can't make a go of it here," he said ; " I must leave." 

His wife was ready to share his fortunes, be they good or 
bad, and she agreed that his plan was the wisest. So, early 
in i860. Captain U. S. Grant, with his affairs at their worst 
and his fortunes at their lowest, turned his back on the part 
of the world where he had found life a very " hard scrabble" 
indeed, and moved his family to Galena in the State of 
Illinois. 

For, in Galena, his two younger brothers were in the 
leather business and Jesse Grant, his father, had arranged 
with them to give Ulysses a chance to do something as 
clerk in their leather store. 



CHAPTER W. 

HOW HF. HHARI) THE CALL TO DUTY. 

/^APTAIN GRANT'S father was "well off," as riches 
^-^ were reckoned in those days, and was perfecth' able to 
help his eldest son out of his difficulties. 

lUit Jesse Grant had always been proud (~)f this Ixn' of 
his and it hurt his pride to have Ulysses so unsuccessful in 



//oir ///•; HEARD nil-: call jo dlty. 105 

business, lie was considcral)!)- disturbed when Tlysscs 
came t(^ Covington to talk things over with him: but when 
the father saw that he reallv must ijive the son another litt 
over the hard places, he " took hold of Ulysses's affairs." as 
he said, and straightened them out by making a })lace for 
the ex-soklier, ex-farmer, ex-real estate agent in the leather 
store at rialena. (^f which he himself was chief owner. 

Besides his tanneries in Ohio, Jesse Grant for several 
vears had a prosperous leather store in Covington. Ken- 
tuck)-. He had also opened a large "leather and findings " 
store in Galena, which he had put in charge of two of his 
sons — both younger than Ulvsses. The Galena store, in 
1S60. wasone of the best buildings in that bluff-top town 
on the Galena ri\er. just ])ack from the Mississippi, and in 
it was carried on the lan-est leather and harness business 
northwest of Chicago. 

It was not into the tannery business, as is generally 
stated, that U. S. Grant went when he moved to Galena. 
Indeed, it is not really correct to call him a tanner. You 
will remember that, when he was a boy, he did but little 
work in his father's tanvard, and his work at Galena was 
really selling leather and harnesses in a fine large store. 

His home was with one of his brothers in a modest, 
two-story brick house awa\' up on one of the terrace-like 
bluffs on which Galena is built, to the north of the principal 
street of the town, and in what was then considered a most 
desirable neighborhood. 



io6 



HOW HE HEARD THE CALL TO DUTY 



Captain Grant was fond of his home, fond of his wife, 
fond of his children and, of course, fond of his horses, two 
of them beine used in the leather business and cared for 
and driven by the captain. 

He was a quiet, retiring sort of citizen and neighbor — 




grant's home in galkna, in iSoi. 
(From a recent photoj^iaph.) 



" a very commonplace man," people said. He was never a 
stern or strict father, but he was a Un'ing and a just one. 
He liked his boys to be boys — manly, honest, fearless, self- 
reliant and true. His eldest bov, then about twelve vears 



now irr. ifF.AKn iJU: call to dcty. 107 

old, he taught U^ swim simply hy tossing- him into deep 
water where he just had to swim ashore. But the watehful 
father was elosc at hand to help and direct the hoy. 

His remoxal to Galena and business connection there was 
an excellent cham/e for Ca])tain (irant. For, althou-di onlv 
a clerk (^w a six-hundred dollar salarv in his brother's store, 
he was really given a position in a good business in which, 
b\- \\\> father's direction, he would, in time, become a i)art- 
ner. This he hoped would come around in a year or so. 
I)Ut when that "year or so " was over, he, as he tells us in 
his "Memoirs," "was engaged in an empUnnient which 
required all my attention elscwdiere." And, indeed, it did. 

Captain Grant lived for eleven months in Galena — from 
May, iSoo to April. iSOi. He was a quiet, square-shoul- 
dered, spare-built man of thirty-eight, stooping slightlv. 
because of farm-work antl fever and ague. He walked to 
and from the leather store, or drove the horses about in the 
business waq^on. He was salesman, bill-clerk and collector 
for the leather st(M"e. He was a great "home-body." He 
visited but a few neighbors, and was, even after ten months' 
residence, as he says, almost a comj)arative stranger in Galena. 
No one paid very much attention to him or expected that he 
would ever amount to much, except as the success of his 
father and brothers in business might push him into a fairh' 
comfortable li\ing. 

Suddenl)', to the quiet, unobtrusive, ordinarv-appearing 
man cam^- the call to dut\' that prox'ed his call indeed. 



io8 HO IV HE HEARD THE CALL TO DUTY. 

Political troubles ended in actual conflict. Americans were 
in arms a^^ainst Americans. Fort Sumter was fired upon. 
The president of the United States called for volunteers 
to defend the Union. There was war in the land. 

Ulysses S. Grant was no politician. He had neither the 
wish nor the will to be one. But he had thought a great 
deal about the questions that were putting the Union in 
peril. Ik'ing a soldier by education and experience, he knew 
well what war meant, and he hoped very much that so terri- 
ble a thing would not be forced upon his native land. 

He talked this way; he voted this way; he helped, as 
far as his voice and vote could help, to put off the day that 
would divide the people of the United States and set the 
North against the South. Many other good and true men 
did so, too; but the dreadful day could not be put off. It 
had to come. It was what was called the " Inevitable Con- 
flict" — that is, the trouble that can not be put off. 

When it did come, in the firing upon Tort Sumter by 
the Southern batteries encircling that little fortress-covered 
island in Charleston harbor, it aroused to action the very 
men who had tried hardest to keep it off. " The Union," 
they said, " must be preserved. The flag shall be defended." 

How well I remember, as a bov, the coming of the tid- 
inirs of that terrible twelfth of April, 18O1. How excited 
was every one. How people talked and talked, when Presi- 
dent Uincoln said, " I must have seventy-fi\e thousand men 
to help nie put down this rebellion."' And how they did 



I/Oir ///•; JIEARD TJIIi CALL 1 J)UTy. 



109 



thiiiL^s! I'or the soldiers sprang- to amis at oncc and the 
\\ hoK- Ijioad hind became one mighty camp. 

There were mass meetings held all over the northern 
coLinliA' ; business almost stopped; schools coidd hardly 
"keep;" men who had thought and \-oted differently now 
clasped hands for the Union 
and from the enthusiastic 



^1 




^y' 










.1 r ') 










mass meetings went men 
pledged to march " on to 
Washington " to obey the 
call of the president, to de- 
fend the National Capital 
and uphold the nation's 
honor. 

Just such a meeting as 
this was held in the court 
house in Galena, wdiere 
(irant lived. It roused the 
citizens to enthusiasm and 
when, two days later, an- 
other meeting was held to 
encourage enlistments, the country court house was crowded. 

Someone must preside. This was to be a militarv meet- 
ing, not a talking one, and some one suggested Captain U. 
S. Grant for chairman. 

Not a hundred peoj)le in Galena knew who this Captain 
Grant was, and when a medium-sized, stoop-necked, serious 




"^.i. 



i^' 



A ".MU KtCKUn.' IN 1S61. 



no 



HO IV BE HEARD THE CALL 70 DUTY. 



T»T1-! I ! ! ! "! 



looking man in a blue army overcoat rose in his place, the 
crowded court room looked at him curiosly. 

He did not know just what to do. It was a new- 
position for him. 

"Get up on the platform! go up; go up, Cap'n ! " men 
shouted. But the captain did not like such prominence. 

He simply smiled, 
shook his head and 
leaning both hands 
on a desk looked 
over the throng. 

"With much 
embarrassment and 
some prompting," 
he savs in his " Me- 
moirs," " I made out 
to announce the ob- 
ject of the meeting." 
" Fellow Citizens," he said, " This meeting is called to 
onjanize a companv of volunteers to serve the State of IIH- 
nois " (in defence of the Union, he meant, of course). " Be- 
fore calling upon y(^u to become volunteers I wish to state 
just what will be re([uired of you. First of all, uncpiestion- 
ing obedience to your superior officers. The arm\- is not a 
picnicing partv, nor is it an excursion. A'ou will ha\-e hard 
fare. \'ou ma\- be obliged to sleep iA\ the ground alter long- 
marches in the rain and snow. Main- <>\ the orders ot \-our 




THE COURT HOUSE AT GALENA. 

Wlterc Grant made /its first speech. 



JIOW HE HEARD THE CALL TO DUTY. i,, 

sii|H'ri(H's will sccni to x'ou unjust, and wt they must be 
borne. It an injustice is reall\' done you, however, there are 
courts-martial where vour wrongs can be investiLTated and 
offenders punished. If \ou put \-our name down here it 
shall be in full understanding' what the act means. In con- 
clusion, let me sa\', that, so far as I can, I will aid the com- 
pan\', and I intend to re-enlist in the serx'ice myself." 

That was Grant's first speech. It was like him — plain, 
honest, convincing and right to the point. It did not mean 
fun for those who enlisted. It meant business. To men 
who were as determined and as interested as himself it told 
more than sounding words and bursts of eloquence. As a 
result, the Galena compan\' of \'olunteers was speedil\' made 
up. More than enough enlisted. Indeed, over an hundred 
had to be rejected because the ranks were full. 

At once. Grant was offered the captainc)' of the com- 
panv. But he had other plans. lie knew that, in the 
nation's stress, men of experience would be needed to serve 
as officers. " I can't afford to re-enter service as a captain 
of volunteers," he said. " I have served nine years in the 
recrular armv and I am fitted to command a reiriment." 

So he declined to take the post of captain of the com- 
pany he had helped to raise, although he promised to do 
everxthing in his power to help them get into ser\'ice. 

This mav seem to vou, at first, as not just the modest 
wa\' that Currant usuall\- acted; but it was really wise and 
just. Do you remember, in the story of George Washing- 



112 



HOW HE HEARD THE CALL TO DUTY 



ton's life, the trouble that he had because he would not take 
a place offered him as captain in the American militia when 
he knew he ought to be colonel ? His reasons for this action 
were honorable and right, and Captain Cirant's were the 
same. He knew that the United States had educated him 
and that, to his country, his best service was due ; this ser- 
vice called him really to higher duties than that of a cap- 
tain of a company. Regiments would be formed that needed 
reliable heads; and even patriotism doesn't always know 
how to lead armies to victory. So he waited; but. while he 
waited, he gave all his time to working for the Union, 
drillino- the new recruits, telling the leaders wdiat to do ; he 
even helped the ladies get up the proper kind of uniforms 
for the volunteers. After that meeting at which he spoke 
he never, so he tells us, went into the leather store again 
to put up a package or do an\- other business. 

Determined to serve, but equally determined to accept 
service onlv as he felt it to be his duty — in a position 
suited to his experience and rank — he followed the Galena 
company to Springfield, the capital of Illinois and the home 
of Abraham Lincoln. Here, in the midst of all the war 
fever and excitement. Captain Grant sought, for days, to get 
his just deserts. But he was too modest to insist upon 
what he knew to be his rights and at last became discour- 
aged and declared that he should try somewhere else. The 
politicians and fancv soldiers were too much for him and 
his chance for serx'ice was but small. 



I/Oir ///•; JIEARD THE CALL JO DC TV. ,,3 

" I canic chnvn here," he saitl to a friend. " l)ecause I fell it 
mv duty. The ijovcmmcnt educated me ami I felt I oii«'ht 
to offer my services a^ain. I have applied, to no result. I 
can't afford to stav here lonq^er and I'm <'-oin!j; home." 

He did accept a post in the adjutant-general's office — that 
is the place in which most of the army business is trans- 
acted; but he felt it to be little more than "a clerk's job." 

" Anv bov could do this," he said. " I'm i::oini/ home." 

Do you remember how nearly Spain lost the glorv and 
honor oi placing Columbus on his feet, when he wished to 
make that w(^nderful vovage to the West? Vou have read 
of it in the story oi Columbus, of course. In the same wav, 
the State of Illinois came verv near to losini: the honor and 
^lorv of Grant's services. As Columbus thought of offerinir 
his services to France because Spain rejected him, so Grant 
was on the point of offering his services to Ohio because 
Illinois refuseel them. 

In t'act. a commission as colonel of the Twelfth Ohio 
rec'iment was already on its way to him — though he did 
not know it — w hen there came a tele'-rani from the i^ov- 
ernor of Illinois asking if he would accept the command of 
the Twenty-first Illinois re<Mment. Before the Ohio offer 
reached him, Grant hail already telegraplunl his acceptance. 

The Twenty-first Illinois had rather a hard name. Its 
colonel and its men did not cret aloncr well, and so many 
complaints against the regiment reached the governor that 
changed its colonel. So U.S. <irant became Colonel Grant 



114 



JIOJV HE HEARD THE CALL TO DC-TV. 



The Twentv-first Illinois was awaiting- orders for service 
at Camp Yates, just outside of Springfield, and here Grant 
went to take command. 

'* Colonel," said Congressman Logan who accompanied 
him to the camp, " this regiment of yours is said to be a lit- 
tle unruly. Do vou think you can manage them?" 

" I think I can," the colonel answered; and from the way 
he said it, Congressman Logan thought so, too. 

Arrived at Camp Yates, he was introduced to his new 
command by Congressman Logan, whom the county knew 
later as rrcncral and senator. He was a brilliant, popular 
and inspiring orator, and opened his address with words 
that stirred his soldier-audience to enthusiasm. The new 
colonel was quietly in the rear, but now Logan led him for- 
ward and, as a fitting close to his thrilling speech said, 
" Illinoisans ! allow me now to present to you your new 

colonel, V . S. Grant." 

Of course the soldiers cheered. It was a great day for 
them. They had got rid of one objectionable colonel and 
had now been given another who did not look particularly 
stern or masterful. No doubt they thought they could do 
about as they pleased with Colonel Grant. 

" Speech ! speech ! " they demanded. 

Everybody made speeches to the soldiers in those days 
— speeches full of patriotism, love f<^r the flag, lowalty to the 
Union and all that. Of course the soldiers expected just 
such a speech from Culoncl (irant. 



I/OJr HE JIF.ARD 77/ F. C.tLL TO DT^TY. 



"5 



He hesitated a iiioiiu-nl. Then in a ek-ar. calm, c\-cry- 
da\' \-()iee, that all could hear and all could understand, he 
said : 

" Men ! c;o to your (juarters." 

That was all his speech. There was not nuuh to it. was 



.''*i^;i '■■■ 





f ■ 



« 






"mkn! go to Yolk quarters," said colonel grant. 



\ 



there ? But it gave his soldiers an altogether new idea of 
their colonel. 

They speedily discovered that their new idea meant 
"business."' That very night at dress parade, the colonel 
said to his officers. " A soldier's first duty is to obev his 
commander. I shall exjiect my orders to he obeyed as 
exactly and instanth' as if we were on the field of battle." 



,,6 HOW HE HEARD THE CALL TO DUTY. 

Thev were so obeyed, for both officers and men saw at 
once, that, as one of the sergeants said, " he's the colonel of 
this regiment." 

From an unruly, careless and disobedient set of men, 
the Twenty-first Illinois developed into an orderly, well- 
drilled soldierly regiment. 

In all this their colonel was quiet, self-controlled, direct 
and just. He always knew what he wanted and how to get 
it. He was strict, but never ugly; firm, yet always friendly; 
determined, yet never tyrannical. His superiors were de- 
li'dited with his orders and reports, which were short, clear 
and right to the point. He attended to everything himself. 
where attention was necessary, and as a result his command 
was alwavs well looked after and supplied. He trained his 
men into soldiers and, therefore, they respected and obeyed 
him. 

" We knew we had a real soldier over us," said one of 
his lieutenants. "We knew, too, that we had the best com- 
mander and the best regiment in the state." 

In less than a month after he had taken command of his 
re'-iment. the Twentv-first Illinois was ordered into Mis- 
souri, where General Fremont was in command and w here 
an invasion of the state by southern troops was daily 
expected. 

Grant thought this a fine opportunity to train his men 
to long marching. So, instead of going across the state by 
railroad, he marched his regiment across. 



I/OU- HE IIF.ANn THJ: CALL TO DUTY 



"7 



" I pR-fiT to (Ic^ my first niarcliin_^ in a t'ric-ndlv country 
anti not in the enemy's conntix-." he said, and the result 
provctl the wisdom of his decision. 

The knowleds^c of his able discipline and care of his men 
became known, and before the Illinois ri\er was reached his 




"I I'KKKKK lo 1"> MV I IK>.I MAKiHINt; IN A KRI' . . ,' u;. 

command was orderecl to a threatened point near the town 
of Palmvra in Missouri. 

It did not pro\-e a field of battle, howex'cr. for the cnemv 
retired before Grant reached Palnnra. The colonel's sensa- 
tions however are worth recording-, as he has put them 
d(M\-n. For. he tells us in his " Memoirs," that as he 



ii8 HOW HE HEARD THE CALL TO DUTY. 

approached Palmyra he was anxious, rather than fearless or 
frightened. It was because of his responsibility as the 
leader of men ; not because of any lack of courage. He had 
never before been in a position of command and, he says: 
" If some one else had been colonel and I had been lieu- 
tenant-colonel I do not think I would have felt any 
trepidation." 

You see how slowly he developed into a real leader. 
The best soldier is not always the boasting, reckless leader ; 
he mineles caution with couraq-e, and his anxietv is often 
ereater than his ambition. 

But Colonel Grant's men never knew his feelings. They 
knew him to be a leader they could trust and follow, and he 
handled them well. They marched en to a village called 
Florida ; but the confederates had fled before them, and 
finally Colonel Grant was ordered to join General Pope who 
was stationed in the town of Mexico, in Missouri. 

When he reached there he was given command of the 
district, with three recriments and a section of artillerv. He 
found the men of his new command lacking in discipline 
and the people complaining of their actions. Colonel Grant 
changed all this at once. His own regiment was what is 
called an "object-lesson" in soldiering. lie niade soldiers 
out of the men ; he protected the people ; he kept the dis- 
trict o\-er which he h;ul been placed in command, orderly, 
([uiet and peaceful. 

One dav the news came t(^ him lliat he had been made a 



I/Oir HE HEARD THE CALL JO DUTY. 119 

brigadier-gcncral. This was a great surprise for him. But 
it shows that cjuiet, careful and deteniiined work pays. 

You see, the president had asked the Illinois Conj^'^ress- 
men to recommend a few ^^ood Illinois officers for promotion 
to the post of brii^adier-general. Colonel Grant scarcely 
knew the Com^ressmen from his state, ])ut thev had heard 
good reports of his abilit\- and discipline and what he had 
done with the men over whom he was placed in command. 

So, on the list of seven names proposed by them to the 
president as brigadiers, the name of Ulysses S. Grant led all 
the rest, and at once he was ordered to take command of an 
important district in Missouri, with headquarters at the 
town of I ronton. 

The day of return f(^r patient waiting had dawned for 
him ; and his readiness to respond to the call of dut\" and to 
do his best in whatever position he was placed, l)ut to sav 
what that position should l.)e, hatl already found its result 
in his call to go up higher, even before he had been tried in 
the heat and fire of battle. 



120 HOW THE GENERAL UNLOOSED THE M/SSISSLFFL 



A 



CHAPTER VII. 

HOW THE GENERAL UNLOOSED THE MLSSLSSIPPL 

S brig'adier-g"eneral, Grant was sent to take charg"e of a 
larij-e district coverini-' all the countrv south of St. 
Louis and all of southern Illinois. 

This was on the border-land between the North and the 
South. It was full of rebels and half-rebels — and those 
who were half-rebels were much harder to deal with than 
the out-and-out rebels. It is always so, you know; an open 
eneniv is better than a secret foe. 

General Grant made his headquarters at Cairo, at the 
extreme southern tip end of Illinois. One of the first thing^s 
he determined to do was to give the " half-rebels '" a lesson, 
by seizing the city of Paducah on the Kentucky side of the 
Ohio ri\er, f()rty miles or so east o{ Cairo. 

Kentucky had nut yet joined the Confederacw but was 
trvinu' to remain neutral, as it is called — that is. favorimj 
neither the one side nor the other. 

This is not an easy thing to do when opposing armies 
are marching from either side. As the Confederate troops 
already occupied two t(n\ns in the state. General Grant 
believed that the Union forces should have a ^rood footin^j 
thiTc, also. 



iioir Tin-: (;exerai. i'moosed the .\nssrssirri. i.m 

So he sailctl down the rix'cr to Padiicah with his soldiers 
and occiipi(Ml the t(n\n, and though the " neutrals " were 
very indis/nant. the I'nion forces had secured a footini- in 
Kentucky. 

B\' this time he had a well drilled arnn' in eani]) at 
Cairo. These soldiers had enlisted to fight and the\- were 
tired of bein^' idle. So was Grant; and, at last, takinj^ 
three thousand men with him. he started to break up a camp 
of Confederates at a place called Belmont, on the Mississippi 
river, twenty or thirty miles south of Cairo. 

Directh' opposite Belmont in the town of Columbus a 
large Confederate force was stationed, and when drant had 
surprised the camp at Belmont these troops began coming 
across the ri\'er to help their comrades. 

A fierce fi^ht followed. The Confederates were driven 
into their camp. Grant had his horse shot under him, l)ut he 
kept his men moving, and at last the Confederates turned 
and hastily fled from their camp to the ri\er. 

It was a Union \ictorv. It was Grant's first battle in 
the Ci\-il War and the first that his soldiers had fought. 
When the bovs in ])lue found they hatl really won a battle 
they were so overjoyed that, as the saying is, they com- 
pletely lost their head>. The)' rushed about the captured 
camps firing guns, making speeches and "carrying on" until 
Grant, to bring them to their senses, set the camp on fire. 

While this was going on, the Cc^nfederates on the river 
bank had been reinforced by uK^re troops from across the 



122 HO IV THE GENERAL UNLOOSED THE MLSSLSSIJ'PL 



river. They turned, spread out their lines and s\\-oopino- 
down on the Union troops fairly surrounded them. 

At this, Grant's officers and soldiers were greatly alarmed. 
They supposed, of course, that they were captured. 




GUANr AT BELMONT. 

•• IVi cut our 'way in ; xuc've i;ot to cut cur way out."' 

"What shall we do?^" they said to him. "We are 
surrounded." 

"Well," said Grant coolly, "We cut our way in. we've 
got to cut our wa\- out." 

And they did. Under tluir general's lead they pushed 
down to the river conwying :ill their wounded men with 
them and, under a heav\- fire got o\\ board the steamers and 
were S(M)n on their wa\' hack to Cairo, \-ietors in their first 



/row Jiff- i;exf.ral lnloosed y///-; M/ss/ssirri. .23 

battle, th(Tiii;li 1)\' a ww n:uT(n\- chance. But that chance, 
\()u sec, was l)ecause' they had a cool-headed leader. 

Idle battle of lalinont destro\-ed the rebel plans, broke 
up their camp, saved the Union posts from attack and, above 
all. so inspired the men engaged in the fight that, as ( irn- 
eral drant himself declares. " they aecpiired a confidence in 
themselves that ditl not desert them throu'-h the war."' 

The battle of Belmont was fought on November 7th, 
1 861. It was the hrst step toward breaking into the Con- 
federate lines. At once, (icneral (jrant decided to make a 
still greater step and clear the Confederates awav from the 
two forts thev had built on the Tennessee and Cumberland 
I\i\'ers. in Stewart County, northern lY'nnessee, just where 
the jog comes that you can find on your map of Tennessee. 

If he could capture those two forts he could keep the 
Confederates from the control of a fertile section of country 
from w hich they drew their supplies. It was some time be- 
fore he could get permission from his superior officers to 
make the attack. Thev thouijht it too riskv. 

But when, at last. the\' told him he miijht tr\- to take 
Fort Henry, he did not waste a moment. With se\enteen 
thousand men. and seven gunl)oats to help him. he mo\'ed at 
once on B^ort Henry <^n the Tennessee. On the fifth of Feb- 
ruarv he was before it. But the officer in chanre felt that he 
could not resist an attack ami. lea\'inir but a small (jarrison. he 
sent his other men, almost without a fight, across country to 
Fort Donelson, eleven miles away. Then he surrendered 



124 !^0W THE GENERAL UNLOOSED 'HIE MI SSI SSI PPL 

Fort Henry, and Grant, taking command, sent word to his 
superior officer that he had captured Fort Menry and would 
take Fort Donelson in a very few days. 

This ahnost took his commanding officer's breath away. 
The authorities were not used to such quick work. Fort 
Donelson was a large and strongly-built circle of earth- 
works, perched a hundred feet above the Cumberland river 
and protecting all that region. Its capture was considered 
impossible. 

So General Halleck, who was Grant's superior, sent word 
to him to " hold Fort Henry at all hazards," and sent him 
also pickaxes and shovels so that he could strengthen the 
fortifications. But Grant had other plans, and as he was not 
ordered not to take Fort Donelson, he set out to do it. 

He knew both the Confederate generals in command at 
Fort Donelson. He had served with one of them in the 
Mexican war; he knew all about the other, too, and he 
felt certain that he knew what thcv would do — or would 
not do. 

So, at once, with fifteen thousand men, he marched 
ajjainst Fort Donelson and confronted an armv of twentv-one 
thousand men, protected by strong fortifications. 

With the gunboats on the river helping him, he set about 
his work. At first, the i/unboats made an attack from the 
ri\cr; but the <j;uns of the fort answered ^allantlv and the 
vessels were crippled and dii\'en back. 

The Confederates were deli-'hted at this victorv. and next 



i/ow THE (;i-:xi-:ral l:xi.oo.\ld nu-. Mi^^j6^jpri. 125 

(la\- came pouring- out of the f(^rt and bci^an a sharp attack 
oil ihc L'uion lilies. Ikit Cicncral Lew Wallace, who, years 
after, wrote " I'.eii Ilur." held back the Confederate attack 
on the right, aiul, as Cirant came hurrying up, the enemy fell 
back again to their fortifications. 

At once he followed up their retreat by ordering his men 
to charge the Confederate outworks. They did this o-allantlw 
Thev captured them; and that night the Union soldiers slept 
within the outer works of Fort Donelson. 

That \-er\- night the two commanding generals at Fort 
Donelson. feaiing for their lives if they were caught, stole 
out of the fort by the back way and slipped off with alx.ut 
three thousand men. Next day, General Puickner, whom 
they left in command, saw that he could not hold Fort Don- 
elson against attack without more heljx and sent a note to 
General Grant asking what terms he would give the Confed- 
erates if they gave up the fort. 

Vou remember General Buckner, do vou not? He was 
the officer who climbed the volcano of Popocatapetl with 
Grant, when thev were both voung soldiers in Mexico. 

Grant knew him, too; but he sent back a note in replv 
that has become famous : 

" No terms," it saiil, " except uncon(liti(^nal and immediate 
surrender can he accepted. I {)ropose to mo\e immediatelv 
upon your works." 

That settled it. General Buckner knew that Grant meant 
just what he said and would keep his word ; and. on the >ix- 



126 HO IV THE GENERAL UNLOOSED THE MISSISSIPPL 

teenth day of February, 1862, Fort Donelson with seventeen 
thousand men surrendered to General Grant. 

" General," said Buckner to Grant, after the surrender, 
" if I had been in command, you would not have got up to 
Donelson as easily as you did." 

" General," said Grant to Buckner, " if you had been in 
command, I should not have tried the way I did." 

Which shows, does it not, what an advantage it was for 
Grant to have served in the Mexican war? He knew the 
characters of the men he was marching against. 

The whole North was delighted at the fall of Fort Don- 
elson. " Who is this man Grant ? " they began to ask, and 
catching sight of his initials — U. S. — they called him, 
from his famous letter to Buckner, " Unconditional Sur- 
render Grant.' 

As for him, he at once advocated another advance. He 
had broken into the rebel lines at Belmont. He had cleared 
the rivers bv the capture of Forts Henry and Donelson. 
Now he wished to go a step further and attack the Confed- 
erate base of railroad communication at Corinth in north- 
ern Mississippi. If he succeeded in this, he would break 
throuuh their second line of defense. 

His armv was to be reinforced, and were to gather at 
Pittsburi:' Landini'- on the Tennessee River, twentv-two miles 
from Corinth. Here he was encamped when Albert Sidney 
Johnston, the Confederate general and a gallant leader, deter- 
mined, like Grant, not to wait to be attacked, but to attack. 
















V 




now THE (iEXEKAI. rXI.OOSED THE Af/SS/SS //'/'/. i-j 

So, on the sixth of April, with an army of forty thousand 
men he fell upon (irant's force of twenty-five thousand, strik- 
ing' it at Shiloh church three miles from Pittsburg;- Land- 
ing. There a terrible battle was fought. It was as Grant 
savs •' acase of southern dash against northern endurance.** 

The battle lasted through two days and its story proves 
the truth oi Grant's words. The first day"s fight was favor- 
able to the Confederates. Again and again they threw 
themselves upon the Union lines, which being made up in 
manv cases of new men — "raw recruits" — staggered, 
broke and gave away. But they reformed again speedily, for 
their leaders were such fine soldiers as Generals Sherman, 
McClernand. Wallace and McCook. Through the entire 
dav, from eight o'clock until sunset the Union troops of 
25.000 men held at bay the Confederate army of 40.000, well 
5/cneraled and determined to win. 

Before nis^ht came General Buell with nearlv 20.000 more 
men. To him the situation looked desperate and he said 
to Grant. " General, what preparation have you made for 



retreating .■" 



And Grant replied confidently, " Why, I haven't given 
up the hope of whipping them, yet." 

It was almost like the answer of the famous John Paul 
Jones, the plucky sea captain in the American Revolution, 
who. when called upon to surrender, shouted back, " I haven't 
yet begun to fight." 

As Grant looked over the field at night, rain-soaked, 



13° 



HOW THE GENERAL UNLOOSED THE M/SS/SS/TTL 



blood-sprinkled, disadvantageous, with an enemy sleeping in 
his captured tents, confident of \'ictory, when all but he 
expected defeat on the morrow, he studied over the situation 
and said, " We shall win to-morrow. Begin the fight as 
soon as you can see, and we shall report a victory." 




grant's charge at shii.oh. 
/•>■(>/// (i/i oLi 'u'iir-thnc print. 

It was as he said. The second day's fight was favorable 
from the start. All day the Confederates were driven back, 
back, back, fighting for every inch of ground. At three in 
the afternoon Grant himself led two regiments in a charge; 
the Confederates broke and ran and the battle of Shiloh 
ended in a victory for the Union. 

It was a victorv only because of General Grant's tenacity 



J/Oir TJ/J-: GEXKRAL LXLOOSKJ) 'J J//: A//SS/SS //'/'/. i ^, i 

— that is, his (UtcrniinaticMi to stick to a thini^^ until he had 
succeeded — never to acknowlcds/e defeat until he was actu- 
all)- whipped otY the held. The victory, as Grant verv 
properly says, "was not to either party until the battle was 
over." And when it was over the Union soldiers were the 
victors. The leader ot" the Confederates, (icneral Albert 
Sidnev lohnston, was killed; the rebels, though daring- and 
enthusiastic lighters, were worn out ; " it is possible," says 
Cieneral Grant in his account of the battle, " that the south- 
ern man started in with a little more dash than his northern 
brother; but he was correspondingly less enduring." Shiloh 
was the \'ictory of endurance and the Union soldiers learned 
a lesson in this line from their determined and silent freneral. 

So the second line of the Confederate defence was broken 
and Grant pushed onward for a third move. This was 
nothing' less than to divide the Confederacv east and west 
bv starting' at its main centre of communication, the citv of 
\'icksburg on the Mississippi. If that were captured the 
Mississippi would be freed and the Confederacv cut off from 
it> western base. 

It was not set about at once. It was over a )-ear before 

Grant accomplished his purpose. In spite of his successes 
thus far in the war, jcahnis)', calumn\' and lack of appreci- 
ation barred his way. (^rant was of slow development, as 
his story shows, but he had wonderful patience, wonderful 
persistence and wonderful push — three p's that helj) to 
make a i^reat commander. 



132 



HOW THE GENERAL UXLOOSED THE MISSISSIPPL 



Because of his victory at Fort Donelson he was made 
major g-eneral of volunteers — and then he was set aside tor 
another officer, only to be speedily reinstated in his command ; 
after Shiloh he was found fault with and almost arrested, 
onlv to be given full command again, entrusted with a larger 
territory and made general in command of the department 
of the Tennessee. Step by step he worked toward his objec- 
tive point. Battles were fought, advances made, territory 
occupied, and, finally, with twenty-five thousand men under 
his command and a clear field before him he moved against 
Vicksburg, called from its importance and its strength " the 
Gibraltar of the ^Mississippi." 

The Confederacy awoke to its danger and tried to stop 
him. l>ut it was of no use. Grant could not be stopped. 

His risk was great. On one side, behind its entrench- 
ments, garrisoning the town, was Pemberton's army, fully as 
lare'e a force as his own ; on the other side, marching toward 
him with the hope to reinforce or relieve X'icksburg, was 
Joseph \l. Johnston's army, many thousands strong. But 
Grant ne\er faltered. With Sherman and McPherson as his 
trusted assistants, he swung round upon the advancing enemy 
and, at the same time, kept a bold front toward the entrenched 
foe. Me swept around with a resistless rush. Pemberton 
was driven back into the \'icksburg trenches; Johnston 
was defeated in three desperate battles. Within twenty 
days Grant, in five separate battles, beat two armies (who 
united, might have destroyed him.) seized Jackson, the capi- 




MAJoR-GKNERAI. IT. S. GRANT. 

Frffni an old-time VMir-print f<iiblished after the fall of V'icksburs^. 



HO IV THE GENERAL i'X LOOSED 77/ E A//.SS/SSL7'LV. 



'35 



tal of Mississippi, took thousaiuls of prisoners and captured 
stores (){ artiller)'. IIa\ini; thus sepaiated the two aimies 
of his fcxMiKii l)e)'oncl hope of union, he sat cio\\n before 
\'ick.sburg to star\'e it into surrender. 

This was on the nineleentii of Ma\', i''S63. The end 




SI'Or WIIKKE CRAM MET rKMlilRTON TO ARRANGE FOR THE SURRENDER OF VICKSBfRli. 



came speedily. By the first of July the besicQfers had 
reached the outer works, and orders were issued for an 
assault on the sixth. On the third a white tlai^'- appeared on 
the works and Cieneral Grant receiyed a letter from Pember- 
ton. the Confederate commander of Vicksbun-, askiu'-' for 
terms of surrender. 



136 ^OJV HE F0UGH2' IT OUT. 

To this request Grant returned his customary answer: 
*' The unconditional surrender of the city and garrison. . . 

I have no terms other than these." 

There were no other terms, and on the Fourth of Jul\-. 
1863, the very day on which in the North occurred the great 
victory at Gettysburg, Vicksburg surrendered to Grant. 
The Mississippi river was free from the lakes of Minnesota 
to the Gulf of Mexico. The tanner's son had become a great 
and successful general. 



# •'^■--'-^■" ^ I" 



CHAPTER \ III. 



HOW HK FOUGHT IT OUT. 



WHEN Vicksburg fell all the North rejoiced. Well 
might the South have done so, too, could her people 
have seen, as they do to-day, that in their case tailure was 
success. By that I mean that the South gained, and will 
gain, more because of the way the Civil War ended than 
had she won the victories and obtained independence. 

"God moves in a mysterious way 
His wonders to perform," 

the ohl luinn tells us, and in the n^aking of the New 
America throusjh strife and bloe)d. (^ne ot His \\onders was 



//(;//■ ///•; J-'OCG///- IT OUT. 1,57 

ccrtainlv worked out in a inysterious way for the side that 
did nut win. 

When the report of the fall of X'iekshur;^- was sent north 
by the successful general, the land rang with hurrahs. Ilal- 
leck, the conimander-iii-c hicf. w ho had not always believed in 
Grant's plans, or alwavs helped them on. telegraphed to him, 
"^'oiir narration of the campaign, like the operations them- 
selves, is brief, soldierly, and in every respect creditable and 
satisfactorv. In Ix^ldness of plan, rapidit}' of execution, and 
brilliancv of routes, these operations will compare most fav- 
orablv with those of Napoleon about Ulm. You and your 
arm\' ha\e well deserved the gratitude of your cinmtry, and 
it w ill l)e the boast of your children that their fathers were 
of the heroic arm\- w hicii re-opened the Mississippi Ri\er." 

rUit even more than this acknowledgment of his ability, 
Grant prized the congratulations that came from that other 
ereat American whose name and fame are so dear to us all 
to-day. the president — the president — Abraham Lincoln. 
Read his words carefully and see how like that grand and 
noble man was this letter of thanks sent by him to his suc- 
cessful general. 

" My dear (^xeneral," wrote the president. " I do not re- 
member that you and I e\er met personally. I write this 
now as a urateful acknowledgment for the almost inestima- 
ble service vou ha\e done the country. I wish to say a word 
further. When you first reached the vicinity of \'icksburg, 
I thou'-ht vou sh(udd do what vcni t'lnalK- did. — march the 



138- HOir HE FOUGH2' IT OUT. 

troops across the neck, run the batteries with the transports, 
and thus go below ; and I never had any faith, except a gen- 
eral hope that you knew better than I, that the Yazoo Pass 
expedition and the like could succeed. When you got below 
and took Port Gibson, Grand Gulf and vicinity, I thought 
you should go down the river and join General Banks; and 
when vou turned northward, east of the Big Black, I learcd 
it was a mistake. I now wish to make a personal acknowl- 
edgment that you were right and I was wrong. Yours very 
truly, A. Lincoln." 

Gono-ress, too, sent a vote of thanks to this modest victor, 
and the lecrislatures of some of the northern states followed 
suit. He was made major-general in the regular army, and 
both the nation and the government awoke to the tact that 
when, as Lincoln wrote, " the Father of \Yaters again goes 
unvexed to the sea," the tide of war had turned indeed, and 
America had discovered her greatest soldier. 

Soon his new plans developed. He was given the com- 
mand of a great section called the " Military Division of the 
Mississippi." He wished to strike at another i)oint and 
relieve the division of the Union armv which was almost 
shut up in Chattanooga, at bav before the Confederates in 
southern Tennessee. A victorv here would relieve the great 
stretch of hne country between the Alleghany Mountains 
and the Mississippi Ri\'er and this was the next campaign 
that (irant desired to lead. 

He acted quickly as soon as his plans were laid and per- 



//oil' ///'-■ j()i'(;iir I r oir. 



'39 



mission ()l)tainctl fn^ii tlu- W'.ir 1 )fp:irtnicnt at Washin'fton. 
lie first arranged a line of suppl)- to get food to the hun- 
gT\' and beleaguered soldiers in Chattanooga — the "cracker 
line," so the soldier l:)oys called it; then, he drew in sonic c.f 
his nun at one point, hurried on reinforcements to anc)ther, 
sent somc^ (^f the soldiers charging against Mission Ridge, 
fought a great battle on a hill-to[) " abo\'e the clouds" on 
LookcHit M(^untain, 
hurled his arni\- like 
a thunder-bolt asjainst 
the Confederate center 
at Chattanooga, and 
so surprised, and 
dazed the encnu' that 
the Confederate armies 
who had gathered all 
about Chattanoo<'a to 
crush and ca|)ture the 
L nion troops, were 
sent racing for dear 
lite through the moun- 
tain gaps into Georgia. 

The battle of Chattanooga is said by military critics to have 
been one of the most remarkable battles in historx". It 
brought to a brilliant ending Grant's well-planned endeavor 
to secure the great mountain plateau he had aimed for; 
it made him lieutenant-' -eneral and commander-in-chief of 







A CONFEDERATE SHARPSHOOTER AT LOOKOUT MOUNTAIN. 



140 B^OJV HE FOCGHT IT OCT. 

the armies of the United States; it brought him. at once, 
to the direction of affairs in X'ir-inia. where for three years 
the e-enius of Lee had held the northern armies at bav and 
had overwhehiied in defeat the four generals who had led 
the Union soldiers to battle. 

lUit now see the modesty, the generosity, the kind-hearted- 
ness and appreciation of this remarkable man. He had done 
it all ; his brain had thought out, his hand had worked out 
all this plan of victory, from Shiloh to Chattanooga. Vet, 
when he was leaving the West for the East to take his great 
command he wrote to his best and most beloved assistant, 
the brave General Sherman, who was to make that remark- 
able *' march to the sea," a letter in which he gave him 
thanks ami credit for the help he had been to him in his 
western campaign. " No one feels more than I." he said, 
"how much of this success is due to the energy, skill, and the 
harmonious putting forth of that energy and skill, of those 
whom it has been my good fortune to have occupying sub- 
ordinate positions under me. There are many ofticers to 
whom these remarks are applicable to a greater or less 
degree, proportionate to their ability as soldiers; but what I 
want is to express my thanks to you and McPherson. as the 
men to whom, above all others. I feel indebted for whatever 
I have had of success. How far your advice and assistance 
have been of help to me. you know. How far your execu- 
ti(^n of whatever has been given to you to ck^ entitles you 
to th.e reward I am recei\-in'^, \-ou cannot know as well as I. 



jjow 11 1: /■()( cur jt o( /; 141 

I feci all llu' i^ratiluilc this letter would express, i^'ivini;" it 
the most llatteriinj eonstriietion. " 

Do )ou wonder that llu: men who helped him were will- 
in<'' to do their \'er\' best when such words as these came to 
them ? In this world, boys and girls, too many men arc 
wdling to take to themselves all the credit lor wjiat they 
hax'e a share in. It is a sis^n of ♦/(MKlncss as well as fjreat- 
ness to say to another, " Without your help, I should not 
have succeeded." 

For the hrst time since his cadet days Grant was in the 
citv of Washini^ton. For the first time in his life he met 
Abraham Lincoln. The men whose names will ever be joined 
together as the two greatest Americans of the Nineteenth 
Centur\', nut (juietly and cordially; and, in the president's 
room at the White House, on the ninth of March, 1.S64, 
President Lincoln haneleil t(^ General (irant the paper which, 
bv act of Congress, made him lieutenant-general of the 
armies of the United States. 

The two men faced each other — the one, tall, angular, 
ungainly, almost awkward in appearance, but with a face 
that was full of earnestness and an eye that looked straight 
into a man's heart; the other, slim, slightly stooping, alnu)st 
a foot shorter than the president, with a quiet face that 
showed but little of his great power, and an eye, gray, like 
Lincoln's, and, like Lincoln's, his most expressive teature. 

And it is just an indication (^ the real pride Grant telt in 
this ceremon\- that he took with him, not a display ot pomp 



142 



HOJV HE FOUGHT IT OUT. 



and circumstance, but simply his boy, his eldest son, whom 
he wished to have share in his honor and <dorv. 

" General Grant," said the President, handing the soldier 
his commission, " the nation's appreciation of what you have 
done, and its reliance upon you for what still remains to be 
accomplished in the existing great struggle, are now pre- 
sented with this commission, constituting you lieutenant- 
general in the army of the United States. With this high 

honor, devolves upon 
you, also, a correspond- 
ing responsibility. As 
the country herein 
trusts you, so, under 
God, it will sustain vou. 
1 scarcel}' need to add 
that, with what I here 
speak for the nation, 
goes m\' own heart\" 
personal concurrence." 
"Mr. President," 
General Grant replied, 
reading' the words from 
a paper in his hand, " I accept the commission with grati- 
tude for the high honor conferred. W^ith the aid of the 
nol:)lc' armies that have fought on so many fields for our 
common coimtry, it w ill be mv earnest endeavor not to dis- 
appoint vour expectations. I feel the full weight of the 




I'RESIDKNT LINCJI.N JlANDI.Sr, GRANT HIS CU.MMHSION 
AS LIKUTENANT-GENERAL. 




SHKRIHAN. 
MKADE. 



r.RANT AND HtS r.KNKRAI.S. 
GRANT. 



SHERMAN. 
THOMAS. 



/foir ///•• j'\w(;i{T n out. 145 

responsibilities now dcvoK iii:^ on nic, .'uid I know that if 
the)- arc- nut. it will he (Ilk: to those arniit-, ami aljo\e all, 
to the favor of that Providence which leads both nations 
and men." 

Short, )on sec, and modest as were all hi.s utteiances, 
was this speech i^{ acceptance in replv to an (^rdcr that 
placed him in command and leadership of a mii^hty arm\' of 
seven hundred thousand men. 

To use this Qreat armv to ad\anta'''e was what General 
Grant now desired — to make each part of it do somethin*^, 
but especially to make all the parts work together to one 
end — - victory. 

" \\\' have worked so much apart, up to this time," said 
Grant. " that we\e been like a balk)' team, no two ever pull- 
ini^ together' — he just knew how that was. too; Grant was 
a horseman, you know. So to make all parts of the army. 
Hast and WVst. work together, his plan, was to hurl his armies 
against the Confederate armies; to keep hurling them; to 
give the enemy no rest; to give him no chance to draw 
aw a\' troops from (^ne part to reinforce another, and, as he 
declared, "to take no backward step." That was one thing 
Grant never did — i^fo backward. 

In May, 1864, this forward movement was begun. Grant, 
thou'-h directin'"' the mo\ements ^^i all the armies, from 
the Atlantic to the Mississippi, made his headcjuarters with 
the armv of the Potomac, and that force, thou''h commanded 
bv General Meade, was controlled and directed bv (irant. 



146 BOW HE FOLGHT IT OUT. 

It took a \car for Grant to carry out his plans, but he 
kcDt stcadilv at work. He had quite another piece of work 
on hand than he had yet attempted — the conquest of Gen- 
eral Lee, the greatest general of the Confederacy. 

In the wav in which he set about this task we can see 
the oreatness of U. S. Grant as a soldier. He alwavs knew 
and studied the men he was opposed to ; each one he met in 
a different wav. And, in Lee, he knew that he was matched 
ae-ainst a leader who was bold as well as cautious, determined 
as well as patient, masterly as well as wily, and, in every 
wav as the old savin^' has it, " a foeman worthv oi his steel." 

I shall not describe the terrible fights which made the last 
year of the Civil War so wonderful a year of battle. 

You will read the description for yourselves as you grow 
older ; you can read them with even better understanding 
than could those who w^re boys at the time they were 
fou*'ht, or e\-en those who read of them a dozen vears after 
they were fought. For vou will read them as a connected 
story, explained by the light of what we now know as to 
plan and method, and you will see that Grant's whole plan 
of campaign was as simple as it was great: "Give the 
enemv no rest; strike him and keei) striking him. The war 
must be ended and we must end il now." 

Directing everv great mo\cnient; watching every action; 
at the front oftener than at the rear; mingling with the 
men in their camp and on the march; sleeping with them cmi 
the bare orroynd; eating with them their humble rations; 



//Oir //A lOL GHT IT OUT. 



»47 



advancin!^ al\\a\s. inch Ijy inch ])crhans. but always •''oinL'" 
toward >()nuihin-. if dc-fcatcd in one atlcnint trvinLf it a'j'ain 
next (lay; inakin- the enemy defend himself and not defend- 
in!^- himself from the enemy; fearless, thoip^h a hater of 
blood; confident of victory even in the darkest hour; picking 




" I SHALL Fir.HT IT OUT ON THIS LINK IF ir TAKKS ALL SUMMER." 
(From an old ivar-time picture.) 

the best men as his helpers and sticking to them until they 
achieved success — this was (^^rant in \^irfnnia. " Direct as 
a thunderbolt, tenacious as a Ijull-dog." as someone said of 
him. he fought straight on, ne\-er halting in iiis opinion nor 
waverin;/ in his actions. 

" I -shall fight it out on this line if it takes all summer," 



148 now BE BOUGHT IT OUT. 

he wrote in a letter to the government from the terrible bat- 
tlefield of Spottsylvania. That announcement thrilled the 
North ; it gave soldiers and people confidence ; and the 
weary president at Washington with a great sigh of relief 
knew that at last he had a general at the head of his armies 
upon whom he could rely to the end. 

In just thirteen months after the president had handed 
to General Grant at the A\'hite House his commission as 
head of the army the end came. Sherman had made a path 
for his army through Georgia and marching to the sea had 
cut the Confederacv in two; Sheridan, at the head of a won- 
derful body of cavalry had ridden around Lees entire army 
and kept it from running away and from getting any more 
supplies of food or ammunition ; Thomas, at Xash\ilU:, held 
back the western armies of the Confederacy and defeated 
them so that they could not go to the aid of Lee ; Meade, 
the hero of Gettvsl^ur^'', marchinc: as Grant's ri-'ht hand man 
at the head of the army of the Potomac, executed all the 
orders of his chief with determination, precision and despatch ; 
and, at the centre of all stood Grant — firm, un\ielding, 
aggressive, imperative; saying a thing and doing it, too; 
striking, striking, striking — until, at last, in the apple 
orchard at Appomattox the last stand was made, the last 
siwx\ fired, the white flaf>' fluttered out and Lee, serene even 
in defeat, in tlie little McLean f.irmhouse met the triumphant 
general of the I'nion and .surrendered himself and his entire 
armv ])ris()ners of w ar. 




y.'l- f^rt'- ! 



r.iHk l.ffilf' s i 



'>.■■>.■■■ /'.••.'^. 



TIIK NINTH OF APRII.. 1S65. 

7'Af meetiii;^ of Lee ami Grant. 



//ow HF. rare/// ir oi i. 151 

(icncral C.ranl trils us that he had a dreadful sick head- 
ache when Lee's note was handed him a>i<:ing tor an inter- 
\ie\\ to discuss teiins ot surrender. 

"The instant I saw the contents of that note I was cured." 
he said; and no wonder, was it .■' 

Dressed sinipK', in a soldier's blouse, without a sword, 
his general's shoulder straps the only mark of his rank, 
General (irant met Crenc-ral Lee in McLean's farmhouse and 
arranged the terms of surrender. 

Do you know what those terms were? Before Grant's 
day a surrender meant a disgrace, a punishment or a terror. 
Leaders in rebellion were imprisoned, hung or shot; sol- 
diers were penned up like criminals, homes devastated, lands 
laid waste. Surrender meant savagery. 

Now it meant release, relief, friendship. Read what 
Grant wrote to General Lee at Appomattox Court- House, 
Virginia, on the ninth of April, 1S63. 

" In accordance with the substance of w\\ letter to you of 
the 8th instant. I propose to receive the surrender of the 
Army of Northern X'irginia. on the following terms, to wit : 

" Rolls of all the ohicers and men to be made in duplicate, 
one copy to be given to an otticer designated by me, the 
other to be detained by such officers as you may designate. 

"The officers to gi\e their individual paroles not to take 
arms against the United States until properly exchanged, 
and each comi^inv or regimental commander to sign a like 
parole for the men of tht ii- cummancis. 



1^2 



HOW HE FOLGHT rr OUT. 



"The arms, artillery^ and public property to be parked 
and stacked, and Uirned over to the officers appointed by 
me to receive them. This will not embrace the side-arms 
of the officers, nor their private horses or baggage. 

"This done, each officer and man will be allowed to return 
to their homes, not to be disturbed by United States 

authoritv so \ox\<i as thev observe 
their parole and the laws in force 
where they may reside." 

Was not that generous, mag- 
nanimous, great ? But, 
as if to add emphasis to 
his oroodness, Grant said 




to Lee, when the south- 
ern leader told him that 
some of his men 
owned their horses, 
„ " I will instruct my 
paroling officers that 
all the enlisted men 
of vour cawalrv and 
artillery who own horses are to retain them, just as the 
officers do theirs. Idiey will need them lor their spring 
ploughing and farm work." 

" General." said Lee earnestly, " there is nothing you 
could have done to accomplish more good either for them 
(^r f(^r the ''•o\-ernment." 



TIIEY SALUTED I, IKK. OENTLKMIN AND SOI.IJIERS. 



//()i\- ///■: /oi a///' //■ (wr. 



•53 



So \()ii SCI- that one ot (iiaiil's kinillicst deeds was in 
connection with horses, of which he was so fond, and farni- 
ine. at which he had tried his liaiid. 

Then (ieneral Lee mounted his horse; he and Grant 
saluted each other like s^^entlemen and ,soldiers; the Confed- 
erate chieftain rode back to his arniw and the long conflict 
was over. 

As for Grant, he sent to the authorities at Washington 
this short telesjrani : 



-^^ 



HEADgUARTERS, Al'POMA'lTOX C. If.. \'a. 

April ^th, 1865, 4.30 \\ M. 
Hon. E. M. Stanton, Secretary of War, 
Washington. 
General Lee surrendered ihe Army of Nortliern Virginia this afternoon upon 
terms proposed by myself. The accompanying additional correspondence will show 
conditions fully. U. S. Grant. Lieut.-General. 

•' Lee has surrendered ! " 

The North was jubilant. Bells rang, salutes thundered, 
bonhres blazed, there was joy and glorification everywhere, 
and Grant was the hero of the hour. 

In the midst of it all a heavy blow fell on the land. The 
good president was killed. Idiere is reason to believe that 
the ereat irencral wh(^ had led the armies of the Union to 
victory was also marked for the assassin's bullet ; but, ti^rtu- 
natelv, he escaped by a change of plans, and (Hir greatest 
martvr. Lincoln the gcMnl, was the onl\ vict'im ot the mad- 
ness of hate. It was a mighty sacrifice. 

So peace came. The last hostile shot was fired in 



154 



HOir HE FOLGHT JT OUT. 



Texas, the last armed rebel to the national authority had 
surrendered, the grand re\-iew of the armies marched for two 
days before the new president and the general of the armv, 
in Washington, and then as the armies were disbanded and 
the soldiers were sent to their homes, General, Grant on the 
second of June, 1865, issued to them his final order. 

"Soldiers of the Army of the United States," he said to 











AT TIIK (;KAM) K1 VIKW IN WASHINGTON. 



them; " by your patriotic devotion to vour country in the 
hour of danger and alarm, your magnificent fighting, bravery, 
and endurance, you ha\'e maintained the su]:>remacv of the 
Union and the Constitution, o\'erllirown all armed opposition 
to the enforcement of the laws, and of the proclamations 
forever abolishing slaver\' (the cause and pretext (^f the re- 
bellion), and opened the wa\- to the rightful authorities to 



JJOW IlK J-OL(;j/J' /J' UC'J. ,-- 

restore order, and inaii!^ urate peace on a permanent and cn- 
durini^' basis on t\'(i\- toot ol American soil. 

"\'our maiH Ins. .sici^es, and hattles, in distance, dnralion. 
resolution and hrillianc)- of results, dim the lustre of the 
worhl's past militar\- achievements, and will Ik- the patriot's 
precctlenl in defence ()\ libert\- and rii^ht in all time to come. 

" In obedience to \'our countrx's call. \'ou left xour homc-s 
and tamilies, and \'olimtecred in its defence. \^ictorv has 
crowned \our\'alor and secured the purpose of your patriotic 
hearts ; and with the gratitude of your countrymen, and the 
hi<'hest honors a Qfreat and free nation can accord, vou will 
soon be permitted to return to your homes and families, con- 
scious of having discharged the highest dutv of American 
citizens. 

" To achieve the glorious triumphs, and secure to vour- 
selves, voiir fellow-countr\-mcn and posterit\* the blessings 
of free institutions, tens of thousands of vour L-allant com- 
radcs have fallen and sealed the priceless legac}- with their 
lives. The graves n\ these a grateful nation bedews with 
tears, honors their memories, and will e\'er cherish ami sup- 
port their stricken families." 

And thus endetl the long and terrible war that had made 
the tanner's son the greatest soldier of the century. 



156 now J HE KEPUJiLIC GAl'E ITS lERDICT. 



CHAP IK R IX. 

HOW nil-: RKi ui;i.iL caxi: its verdict. 

TIIM war was over, and U. S. (/rant was the hero of the 
hour. How^ well I remember the popidar enthusiasm 
that greeted the hero of Donelson and \'icksljurg' and Appo- 
mattox when he came North. I was a how then and a hero- 
worshipper — all boys and girls are, if they have an\' heart 
and life and love in them. I raced all the way up I)roadway 
beside his carriage, to the old building of the I'nion League 
Club wdiere the general was to have a reception, and only 
my lack of assurance and a sufficient numl)er of years kept 
me out of the club-house, itself. And w-hen the short, stoop- 
ing, brown-bearded, quiet-faced man came out on the balcony 
and bowed to the crowd, oh! how we did cheer. Those 
were great days for boys in New \'ork. 

The victorious ireneral bore his honors modestlw \'ou 
do not need to be told that, lie was ne\'er a man to seek 
publicity or notoriety. 

"I don't like this show business," he used to say. when 
dra!j''"ed forward to be " exhil)ite(l." 

After the surrender of Lee, Crant's first thought was to 
hasten i1k' disbandnient of the sjreat armies of the Union; 
his second was to lielp the repLd)lic ol Mexico. 



//i)ir in I: j<i.rrnLic ciij-. ii:. ika'D/ct. 



^57 



()iir fmiiK T I'oriiK II. the Mexicans, against whom Grant 
liad first marched across the border, were in a bad way. The 
rrcnch emperor, \ai)(>leon lib. had, by force of arms and 




"CRANT WAS THE lltRU OF THE HOUR." 

contrary to the will of the people, established an empire in 
Mexico. 

The United States, years before, had pledged itself not to 
let Europe interfere in the affairs of America. This is called 



158 HOW THE REPUBLIC GAVE ITS VERDICT. 

the " Monroe Doctrine," because it was given to the world 
by President James Monroe — the man who was president 
of the United States when Grant was born. 

This interference in the affairs of Mexico by the Em- 
peror of the French was done in an unfriendly spirit to the 
United States and at a time when, in the midst of a great 
civil war, it was especially mean and cowardly. 

But that was just like Napoleon III., Emperor of the 

French. 

As soon as our war was over and his hands were free, 
General Grant induced the United States government to 
show the French Emperor that a sister republic was not to 
be thus overawed or enslaved without a protest. So, at his 
suggestion, General Phil Sheridan, the greatest cavalry gen- 
eral of the United States, was sent to the southwest and, 
with sixty thousand troops was placed upon the Texan 
border as a strong hint to Napoleon that the French soldiers 
were apt to get themselves into trouble if they staid much 
longer in Mexico. 

Napoleon had made one of his tools, the Austrian prince, 
Maximilian, Emperor of Mexico. But when the Emperor 
of the French saw how the- United States felt in the matter 
and knew that his soldiers might have to face in fight such a 
""cneral as Grant and such troops as Sheridan's sixt\' thou- 
sand veterans, he, as the old saying has it. " deemed dis- 
cretion the better part of valor." So he called home to 
France all his soldiers, and left poor Maximilian \o fight his 



j/oir rnr. RF.rrnric a.ii/- jjs ij-ajulj. 



'59 



own battles — which he was, of course, not able to do, 
because the people ol Mexico were oppcjsed tt) him. 

So Maximilian's i^rand " Iimpire of Mexico" fell; the 
poor prince was shot and Mexico, once ai^ain. was a tree re- 
public — and larL;ely because of Grant's determined actions. 




GRANr ANI> HIS FAMILY. 

From an old photografh, issueu at the close of the war. 

The sad death of Abraham Lincoln made Andrew John- 
son, president of the United States. 

lie was in everv respect the exact opposite of the great 
and orood Lincoln. 

The result was that T^-<sident Johnson was soon in hot 



i6o I/O IV THE KEFUBLJC GAVE ITS VERDICT. 

water with everyone and his whole term was a eonstant and 
unlo\ely s([uabble w ith Congress. 

Into this fight he tried hard to drag- General Grant. 
But it was of no use. Grant knew that the president was 
commander-in-ehief of the armies of the United States, and 
that it was his part as general to yield to his superior 
officer, a soldier's first duty — obedience. 

So he obeyed the president's commands until they 
touched his honor; then he refused. 

This was when President Johnson tried to have General 
Lee, the Confederate general, arrested for treason, impris- 
oned and punished. 

This was the last thing in the world Lincoln would have 
done. It was absolutely against Grant's ideas. Besides, he 
had promised to General Lee and his soldiers, in the name 
of the American people, freedom from punishment, so long 
as they obeyed the laws of the land. They were prisoners 
under parole — that is, they had given their word of honor to 
do nothing- a^rainst the United States. To punish them as 
traitors would l)e breaking his word, and Grant fought 
sturdily for kindness toward them and especially for am- 
nesty or pardon to General Lee. Was nc^t that grand ? 

The nation said it was, and the president hail to yield. 
But he did not like Grant after that. 

President lohnson had his first quarrel with Lincohi's 
stern old war secretary, Stanton. Contrary to the law. he 
forced Stant(Mi out of office, in August. 1.S67. and appointed 



C 



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cfiu! 




m 


^mSS 


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tr 
X 

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r 

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as 




.1 i^^ 



g\ 



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4 






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J/Oir JJ/K KKJ'LJil.JC (;aVE its IKRDJCT. 



"^3 



General Grant, Seeretary of War ad iJitcyiw — that is, until 
a new seeretary should he rc-ularly nominated by the jjresi- 
tleni and a[)|)ro\ed I))' ConL;Tess. 

General Grant therefore served as Seeretary of War. and 
durini^- the months in whieh he oeeupied that high and 
important ofliee he performed its duties accejjtably and well. 

lUit when ('ongress met again, in January. 1868, the Sen- 
ate refused to agree to the president's turning Stanton out 
ot oftiee and he beeame Secretary of War once more. 

Grant had filled the office of Secretary of War, not 
because he wished to but because the president had ordered 
him to ; and he recognized the president, as I have told you, 
as his superior officer. 

But when President Johnson told General Grant not to 
obey Stanton, after the great secretary's return t(j the war 
office, Grant told the president that he could only obey his 
orders when put in writing. 

"You said you would," said the president. "You prom- 
ised to do what I asked vou." 

"I did not," Grant replied. " I simply said I would obey 
vour orders as mv commandinsj" officer." 

The president began to say spiteful things about Grant, 
but the great soldier would not be drawn into a cpiarrel. 

" Mr. President." he said " I w ill do only m\- duty. I 
recrard this whole matter, from be<'innin</ to end. as an 
attempt to involve me in the resistence of law for which 
you hesitate to assume the responsibility in ortlers." 



164 



HO IV THE REPUBLIC GAVE ITS VERDICT. 



The president could say no more after this bold and 
blunt declaration. Indeed, he only got deeper into hot water 
and, soon after, came within a very few votes of beini^- turned 
out of his high office by Congress — that is, by what is 
called "impeachment." 

Soon after this most unpleasant state of affairs in the 
government, the time came to elect a new president. 




GRANT AND JOHNSON. 
.)//•. President, I will do only my duty." 



With one voice the National Republican Convention — 
the same body that had nominated and re-nominated Abra- 
ham Lincoln — selected Ulysses S. Grant as its choice, and 
the vote in the Convention stood six hundred and fifty for 
Grant, and not one aijainst him ! 

General Grant did not wish to be president. He enjoyed 



now '////■: A'/fi r/ic cwr. rrs i /■./,• j>/c7: 



^(>s 



hi> position as General of the Army. 'Vn tlii^ po^itioFi, cre- 
ated especiall}' lor him ami held In' no other man since 
CieorLie Washington's da\-, he had Ix-rn adxanced bv Con- 
^ress on July 25, i86(). It was a life position and i^^ave him 
a salar\' of twenty-two thousand dollars a )ear. W'a.-^ not 
that a !7r(\it chan-'C from the (la\'s — not seven \-ears before 
— when lu' had walked the streets of St. l.ouis, poor, unrec- 
ognized, almost unknown, hunting for work? 

He knew" \\hat the presidenc\- meant — criticism, worries, 
troubles, hard work, misunderstandings, enemies, for four 
years; and then, perhaps, nothing to do. 

But (irant was a soldier; he was accustomed to obev 
orders; in a republic the people rule; they are the masters; 
to their will obedience is due, and it was because he felt in 
this \\ a\'. because he was true and lo\al and <'rand and '-reat 
that V . S. (irant put aside his own desires, sunk his own 
preferences and said, " If the people select me as president I 
must ser\'e." As one writer has said ot this decision, " It 
w as the final sacrifice of a patriot. ' 

So. when thev came to tell him that he was nominated 
for the presidenev he did nc^t say he could not accept the 
nomination, that he was not a tit man for it, that he was 
afraid t(^ assume the responsibilities of the position. He 
met the order like a soldier; and. like a soldier, accepted it. 

"Gentlemen." he said, in the short speech replying to 
the announcement of his noniination, " being entirely unac- 
customed to public speaking, and without the desire to cul- 



i66 HO IV THE REPUBLIC GAVE ITS VERDICT. 

ti\-ate the power, it is impossible tor me to find appropriate 
laniruaire to thank vou for this demonstration. All that I 
can say is, that to whatever position I may be called by your 
will, I shall endeavor to dischari^^e its duties with fidelity 
and honestv of purpose. ( )f mv rectitude in the perform- 
ance of public duties you will ha\'e to judge for yourselves 
by the record before you." 

Then he sat down and wrote to the committee of the 
convention who notified him of his nomination a letter of 
acceptance which is now one of the famous letters of the 
world, for in it occurred these words. 

" If elected to the office of President of the United 
States," he wrote, " it will be my endeavor to administer all 
the laws in good faith, with economy, and with the \iew ot 
giving peace, quiet and protection everywhere. In times 
like the present, it is impossible, or at least eminently 
improper, to lay down a policy to be adhered to, right or 
wron;^, throuirh an administration of four vears. New^ 
political issues, not foreseen, are constantly arising; the 
views of the public on old ones are constantly changing, 
and a j)urely administrative ofticer should be left tree to 
execute the will of the people. I always have respected that 
will, and alwa\s shall. Peace, and unixersal prosperity — 
its sequence — with economy of administration, will lighten 
the burden of taxation, while it constantly reduces the 
national debt. Let us ha\e peace." 

"Let us ha\'e j)cace" — those were great words. They 



j/oir Tin-: Rmiujc a.iiE ris i'f.ki'jli. 167 

fitted tlu- nrcds and spiiii of the lime lu-ttcr than a volume 
(.)! explanations oi' a (loud ul eloquence. And the people 
applauded tluin and adopted them as their sentiment and 
desire. 

.Vs Geneicd Grant had made no exertion to secure his 
nomination, so, to(\ he made no mo\"c toward helpinc^'' for- 
ward his election to the presidency. 

This was not a war campaiij;'n. In that he always led; 
that mo\-ed according" to his directions. In the presidential 
campaign the people were to lead. He was in their hands. 
If the nation wished him for its chief ruler, the nation must 
elect him. lie would give no help, All of which shows, as 
I told you in an earlier chapter, that Grant was no politician. 
He was a soldier, calmh' awaitinij' the call to dutv. 

It came. The National election, in November, 1.S68, 
resulted in the republic's verdict to its greatest soldier: Go 
up higher! And by an electoral vote of two hundred and 
fourteen (nit of three hundred and se\'enteen — twent\'-six 
states out of thirty-four, Ulysses S. Grant was elected Presi- 
dent of the United States. 

Standing upon a platform built for the occasion against 
the splendid east front of the great white capitol at Wash- 
ington, on Thursday, the fourth of March, 1.869, with a great 
cheerimj' thronsj' before him. with senators and sjenerals and 
high officials about him and, beside him, those who were 
dearest to him — his wife and children — General Grant took 
the oath oi oftice to faithfulK' administer the duties ol his 



i68 NO IV mi': KEPI B Lie GAVE IIS VERDICT. 

office duriiiL^' his term as president. Then the i^uns boomed 
a salute ; the steam whistles shrilled out their applause; the 
the bands played ; the people cheered; and that all meant the 
old-time hail: " Lom^ live Ulvsses S. Grant, President of 
the United States!" 

Then, when things became quiet, President Grant read 
his inaugural address. It was short — only about a thou- 
sand words. P)Ut it expressed a firm determination to do 
his duty and serve the nation, as president, as loyally as he 
had served it as general. 

" I have,"' he said, " in conformity with the Constitution 

of our country, taken the oath of office prescribed therein. 
I have taken this oath without mental reservation, and with 
a determination to do, to the best of my ability, all that it 
requires of me. 

"The responsibilities of the position 1 feel, but accept 
them without fear. The office has come to me unsou^'ht; I 
commence its duties untrammelled. 1 brin^' to it a con- 
scious desire and determination to fill it, to the best of my 
ability, to the satisfaction of the people. On all leading 
questions agitating the pu.l)lie mind I will always express 
my views to Congress, and urge them according to m\' judg- 
ment, and when 1 think it ad\'isal)le. will exercise the C(Misti- 
tutional privilege of interpc^sing a veto to defeat measures 
which I oppose. lUit all laws will be faithfully executed, 
whether the\' meet mv approval or not. 

"I shall, on all subjects, have a policy to recommend; 



now THE A'/-:/'f/;//r en/- jjs if.kdict. 



169 



none to ciiforrt: a;^ainsL tin- will (»t the people. Laws arc to 
govern all alike — those opposed to as well as those in ta\'or 
(^^{ thein. 1 know no method to secure the repeal of bad 
or obnoxious laws so effectual as their strict execution." 

As he read, his little daughter Nellie, then just in her 
"teens," stood beside her 
fatlnM". holding his hand, 
until someone jjlaced a 
chair for her, so that 
she mi<'ht sit near " her 
papa the president." 

And after it was 
o\'er, suri'ounded b\' a 
threat and cheering' 
crowd, the new presi- 
dent drove to his new ■ 
home in the nation's 
capital — the splendid 
W'hite House. 

His work there as 
})resi(lcnt was (juite dif- 
ferent troui what he 
had ever been used t(^ as a soldier; and yet. very naturally, 
he brou''ht into it, the same traits that had made him a 
ureat and success! ul soldier. 

As he chose his own lieutenants and heljiers in the arm\-, 
so he wished to select them as president. He asked no 




'^"i^T 



AT TIIK INAUlIURATlO.N. 

Ntllie Grant and her father. 



I70 HOW THE REP LB Lie GAVE JTS VERDICT. 

one's advice, took no one into his confidence, but went his 
way as would a leader of an arnu' planning a campaign of 
which he alone was the director and head. 

People began to talk — that is, the politicians did. They 
had always been accustomed to havin^r their advice asked, or 
to ha\'ing the opportunity to suggest some one t]ie\' knew 
for office or appointment. 

But Grant went on his solitary wav. He made up his 
first cabinet — his circle of ach'isers and helpers, \-ou know — 
to suit himself and not to please the politicians. Then they 
— the politicians — began to grumble. They called Grant 
hard names — the dictator, the man on horseback and other 
thini^s. 

But the soldier-president paid no attention to their 
criticism. He thought he knew what was wanted. He 
selected his cabinet almost without consultation ; every one 
was surprised at his selections; even those selected had to 
be argued with to accept, and when one or two were fountl 
"not eligible" — that is, not permitted by the laws of the 
land, to fill the position offered them — no one was more sur- 
prised or disappointed than President Grant. Then he 
understood that a president and a general were quite tliffer- 
ent. But, all the same, it was a good (-a])inet. and his 
administration was a success, notw ithstanding all he had to 
learn and unlearn. 

It was during his first adminisli-alioii (hat llie eil\- ot 
Washington was re-made. From a mud-hole it became a 



j/oir nil: Kin rj.jc (;.i\r rrs i /rp/ct. 171 

metropolis ; frcMii a sha1)l)\ coiuitrv villaj^c it became a city 
of !^r()\ rs ami bowers, of boulevards and palaces, of beauty 
and impoilaiue, so that it is, to-da\', the most attra(ti\'e of 
(•ai)itals, the finest winter city in the world, the shr)w town of 




^r^^is'L- -L^li-, 







THE NEW WASHINGTON AS GRANT MADE IT. 

America. And this was lar^-elv due to the foresight and 
plannini.^^ of U. S. Grant. 

But greater than material crrowth — than the picturesque 
deveh^pment of j^ranite and tar and sewer and drain pipes 
and brick and morter. wa>; the ^reat stride toward peace 
made bv the Republic's greatest soldier. 



172 HOW TIIK REFUBJJC GAVE ITS lERDICT. 

There w as serious trouble with Great Britain. England 
had n(jt used us well during the great civil war. From her 
ports had sailed rebel war-ships to destroy our merchant 
vessels and drive our commerce from the sea. 

Of course our government objected and said England 
had hurt us. And, after the war was over, the United States 
government demanded satisfaction from Great Britain. 
This was refused. There was grumbling and quarrelling 
on both sides of the sea ; there was even talk of war. 

President Johnson had sadly bungled ; President Grant 
took things in hand. He clearly saw the right and wrong 
of the whole matter; he refused to acknowledge the justice 
of England's position ; he formed his plan for settlement as 
wisely and as directly as he did his plans for battle. 

He made the United States responsible for all demands 
upon Great Britain so that private claims might be counted 
out and the trouble brought down simph' between the two 
governments, dhcn he demanded from Great Britain jus- 
tice — that w as all. 

Our mother-country and old-time enemy objected ; she 
twisted and turned ; Ijut she did not wish war. Finally 
Great I'ritain vielded a point in the dispute. Then Grant 
])ushed on another — just as he had " inched on '" towards 
Vickslnii"'' and Richmoml. 

At last, a commission (^\ fu'e Americans and five En- 
glishmen was appointed to talk o\'er llu' matter. That was 
(Grant's first gieal \ictory. It decided that the United 



no IV TJIK Rl.rCliLlC GAVE ITS VERDICT. 



'73 



States was rii;hl in inakiiiL;" its complaints, and a treaty was 
si^^ncil the eii;luh ol May 1^71, called the liealy of W'a.^h- 
in"ton w hich ''a\e satisfaction to the United States. 

Then the main cjuestion of whether Great P^ritain was 
responsible for the damai^e done by rebel warships fitted out 
in I''n*dish i)orts was submitted for decision — we call it 



^^. 




•■^•/. 


















,^»-r-.. ^.- 




*/ 








-...'!^ 





-isi:'" 



THE CI IV OF GENKVA IN SWITZERLAND WHERE THE COl'KT OK ARBITRATION MET. 

arbitration, now — to a court made up of five picked men 
from the United States, Great Britain. Italy, Switzerland 
and Ih'azil. 

This court of arbitration met at Geneva in Switzerland 
and in September 1872. after lon;^^ discussions, decided that 
Great Britain was in the wron- and must pay to the United 



174 HOW THE TAXNER'S SOX SERVED 7 HE SECOXD TIME. 

States over fifteen millions of dollars to make good the 
damaije she had done. 

This was Grant's second great victory. It was peace 
instead of war ; honorable settlement instead of blood and 
blows as in the old days. 

" I shall never fire another gun in anger," said U. S. 
Grant, and to his unchanging desire and invincible will came 
this great and notable victory of peace with honor — to 
both sides. 

CHAPTER X. 

HOW THE tanner's SON SERVED THE SECOND TIME. 

A "\ TAS there ever a girl or boy who did not say to his or 
* * her playmate " I am mad at you " or " I won't play 
with you ?" Very few, I suspect. It is not a good state of 
mind to be in, or a nice thin*'' to sa\' — but it's the wa\' of 
the world, and. as some old poet has said, " the child is 
father to the man." 

That means, of course, that what children do, grown 
folks sometimes do, as \\ell. The\' get " mad " and call 
names just as they did wlun tlu\' were boys. And some- 
times it is old friends w h(^ do this. 

Idiough the people liked and lionorcd Grant, the politi- 



now Tin-. TAXXER'S SOX SEKl'IiD THE SECOXD 77.\rE. 17; 



cians did not. Kvcii sonic statesmen, who ou;^ht to have 
been l)roader-niinded and clearer-siglited than politicians, did 
not like •' (i rant's way." 

They said he was runninj^- the office to suit himself; that 
he wanted to have all 
the say and become a 
t\rant or a dictator; 
that he was not re-un- 
itin*'- the North and 
South in the ri'-ht 
way: that he was only 
looking- (^ut for his 
own friends in the 
government; that he 
was trvin<'- to make 
the party in power like 
a ijreat machine in 
which he hehl the 
lever. They said — 
well, in fact they said 
about ever\'thin;^ that 
was disagreeable, 
either because they 
were " mad." like foolish boys and girls, or because they 
thou''ht they knew better themselves how to do things, or 
because thev were on the other side in politics and felt 
bound to find fault with the side in power, or becau>e they 




CHARLKS SUMNER. 
A statesman w>io did not ltk( " Grant's 'vay* 



176 HOW THE TANNER'S SON SERVED THE SECOND TIME. 

honestly felt that the way things were being done w^ere not 
for the good of the country. It takes all kinds to make up 
the world, you know. 

But Grant went on in his own direct way. He felt that 
he was doing the best for the country, and. when he believed 
that, nothing could move him. 

He had certain simple views about " running the gov- 
ernment." He wished to put into office men who were 
friendly to him and who would carry out his itleas ; he 
wished to make the republic strong at home and abroad ; 
he wished it to be honest in money matters and to keep all 
the promises it had made when it had to borrow great sums 
of money to pay for carrying on the war. As a result, he 
had done many excellent things as president. He had made 
mistakes, perhaps ; every one makes some mistakes, vou 

know; but see what he had accomplished as president of the 
United States durini^ the four vears he had held the office. 
He had paid a great slice of the public debt — that was 
the money borrowed by the republic to carry on the war; he 
had lowered the taxes — the money that each man has to 
pay towards carrying on the government; lie had tried to 
put only honest and good men into office and to cut down 
the running expenses — that is what we call "honesty and 
econonn- in the public service;" he had been so strong and 
sure a captain, w ith his hand on the rudder o{ the ship o{ 
state, that business had improved and the people, at home 
and abroad, had confidence that llie great American l\ej)ublic 



HOW THE TA.WI-.R'S SO.V SEKVI-.D TlfE SECOM) JJME. x-j-r 



1 1 






would keep all its promises, pay all its debts, recover from 
all the harm done 1)\' those terrible )ears of war and become 
greater, stroni^er, richer and more powerful than ever. 

So, you sec, the people believed in Orant ; and when his 
first four )'ears as 
president were nearly 
over, even though the 
other party wished a 
change — just because 
it was the other party, 
you know, and though 
the discontented ones 
in his own party 
growled and grumbled 
and wished a change, 
also, the people of the 
republic in great num- 
bers said, " Let us 
ha\'e Grant again for 
president. He is a 
safe man and the best 
man.' 

So, at the National 
Republican Convention which met at Philadelphia on the 
fifth of June 1S72. U. S. Grant was unanimously nomi- 
nated as the candidate of the party for president oi the 
I'nited States for a second term. 






HmKaCE GRKKI.F.Y. 
Grant's c/ti^f critic in his second c,]tnfai:^'^n and his oppantnt for 

the fresiiieiicy. 



1 78 HO IV THE TANNER'S SON SERVED THE SECOND TIME. 

Of course he was re-elected. Although the " mad," the 
discontented, the dissatisfied, the jealous, the angrily-critical 
and the honestly-critical men in his own party joined with 
the hostile men in the other party, their efforts failed and 
Grant was re-elected president by a vote of two hundred and 
eighty-six out of three hundred and forty-nine electoral votes 
and by a popular majority of nearly eight hundred thousand. 

It was a cold, bleak, raw and wintrv dav when he stood 
up to deliver his second inaugural. But he stood before the 
people stalwart, determined, but modest and unassuming, as 
if to show the people that he knew his duty to be the repub- 
lic's need, and to do it however the wind of opposition might 
blow or the cold of criticism cut and sting. 

He knew that he was right; and, standing there, he said, 
sorrowfully but feelingly : " From my candidacy for my 
present office in i86S, to the close of the last presidential 
campaign, I have been the subject of abuse and slander, 
scarcely ever equalled in political history. This, to-dav, I 
feel I can afford to disregard, in view of your verdict, which 
I gratefully accept as my vindication." 

So he took the oath of office the second time ; acfain the 
drums beat, the guns boomed and the people cheered; and 
again Ulysses S. Grant, the tanner's son. entered the White 
House, president of the United States for the second time. 

Once more he entered upon that high office not because 
he liked it or wished for it. but l:)ccausc he felt it to be his 
duty; once more, so he believed, the people had selected 




J 



I'RtSilDh.M OKA.M Lt ; l\ 1 1...N.. uis SfcCONU INAUGLKAL ADDRESS. 



J/Oir 'JIfF. TAXXF.R'S SOX SEA'l'IU) TlfF. SECOXJ) IJMJ-.. i8i 

him to act for thcni -awA to look aftrr their affairs and he 
intcnck'tl to scrw thmi honcstl}' and well ; once more he 
found thini^s that must be done and he set about doin;^ 
them. 

Two of these were, what was called, the reconstruction 
of the South and the money (juestion. To both of these he 
gave much thought and care, and the time will come when 
the work of President Grant on both these difficult matters 
will be set down as the work of a statesman and a LTeat 
ruler. 

Very few boys think alike; very few men think alike. 
It is because people difter that the world goes on. 

So, when men in office or in power or in politics or in 
business have a question to settle, they are apt to difter 
about it antl discuss it, until some decision is reached. 

There never was a harder question to settle than how to 
make the southern States wdiich had been in rebellion erood 
Union States again. Probably if Lincoln had lived there 
would not have been so much trouble ; but, for some good 
reason, God thought it best to have us work out the problem 
without that kindl\-, kingly soul. 

So President Johnson muddled it up. and so stirred up 
things that the southern people, who had been ready to 
grasp the hand of peace that Cirant stretched out at Appo- 
mattox, were changed bv Johnson's mistakes and demanded 
where they should have asked. 

This made it hard to settle things, for though none who 



1 82 HOW THE TANNER'S SON SERVED THE SECOND TIME. 



had been rebels ac;ainst the national authority had been 
punished, all had seen that justice must be done. 

For nearly eight years Grant had to face the question 
what to do in the South. 

When the people of the South tried to make things o-q the 

way they wished them 
and ^v e r e unjust, 
harsh and cruel to 
the black men whom 
the nation had set 
free, and the white 
men who differed from 
them, Grant, who tried 
to see the matter from 
their side as well as 
from his own, said 
that he did not wish 
to do anvthinfj that 
should distress or 
hurt them. but. he 
added, in much the 
same way that he had 
said " uncondition.'d 
surrender" at Donel- 
son " I will not hesitate to exhaust the powers vested in the 
executive, wlu-never and wherever it shall become necessary 
tn do so, for the purpose of securinj^" to the citizens of the 




WILLIAM T. SHEKMAN. 

Hero of the "March to the Sta " ; suaessor to Grant as General of 
the- nimv of the Utiitfd States. 



J/0 II- JJIE TA ACER'S SOX SERl'f-.J) 7//E SECOND TIME. 183 

L'nitcd States the peaceful enjoyments of the rig-hts guaran- 
teed to them by the Constitution and the hiws." 

That was stern talk. It was the word of a soldier, and 
it was kept like a soldier. 

There were terrible time.^ in the South. It was wars 
before matters were smoothed out. and the hatred and an^-er 
and w ickedness that were a part of the story of Southern 
progress died down. For, you must know this. b(jys and 
i^irls — no c^ood thimj is ever done for the world, no L'-rcat 
result ever reached, nothim/ reallv worth havin*-' is ever 
obtained without worry, trouble, suffering and loss, liut 
the end came in time. And the new America, the real 
union of states, the true and mighty republic, will, when 
you are men and women, be found to have come to crrandeur 
at last laro^ely because of the determined, unvieldine and 
noble stand of the soldier-president Ulysses S. Grant who, 
with his firm hand, taught the people the value of obedience 
to law and the greatness of a patriotism that knew neither 
North nor South — nothing but the Republic. 

In the same way he settled the money troubles. The 
public debt was great ; the needs of the countrv were great ; 
the year iS^j^ was a dark and trying one. Some of the 
leaders thought they saw a way out by making more money, 
even if it cheapened our dollar and broke the nation's solemn 
promise to pay its debts in honest monev. This was what 
was called the "inflation of the currency" — that is, swel- 
lin-'- it in amount but not in real wilue. 



i84 BO IV THE TANNER'S SON SERVED THE SECOND TIME. 

Grant saw how this would, in a way, help the country 
out of its difficulties, but the more he studied it the more he 
felt certain that it would not be just or right. And when, 
in 1874, the Congress passed a bill of this sort, which 
should make paper money or " currency" as good as gold, he 
vetoed it — that is, he refused to sign it, and sent it back to 
Congress with these words : " I am not a believer in any 
artificial method of making paper money ecpial to coin when 
the coin is not owned or held ready to redeem the promise 
to pay ; for paper money is nothing more than promises 
to pay." 

That sounds like Ulysses S. Grant does it not? He was 
the soul of honor and of truth. 

- Arbitration — the settlement of disputes by peaceful dis- 
• cussion instead of l)y the terrible clash of war, was the vic- 
\tory of Grant's first administration. 

The veto of the inflation bill — honesty in muney mat- 
ters — was the victory of Grant's second administration. 

And when men whom he had trusted, men w hom he had 
placed in high position and honored with his confidence and 
his faith, proved themselves weak and unable to resist 
temptation; when they joined with others to do the nation 
harm by using their high position for selfish and base ends 
— in other words, to put money in their pockets bv using 
their position as the means, without care or thought as to 
their duty to the republic — then the president, like the soldier 
he was, put justice before frientlship. and dut\- al)()ve regard 



//(;//' THE TAXXKR'S SOX SERIKP l U E SECOXJ) 'J /ME. 185 



and, thoinj'h he knew those he h.ul held as friends nii'-ht be 
brouf^ht U^ jusliee, said sini{)l\': " Let no t^uilty man escape." 

In his seeond administration eame the close o{ the first 
one hundred years of the life of the re|)ul)lic — the Centen- 
nial anniversary of the founding" of the United States of 
America. 

The nation celebrated the event grandly, 
and villasje in the land the Fourth 
of Julv, I'^yO, was observed with 
especial honor. In the city of 
Philadelphia, in which, one hun- 
dred years before, the Declaration 
of Independence had been signed, 
and America proclaimed free, a 
six-month's exhibition of the 
world's progress and the world's 
work was displayed. And this 
great Exposition was opened and 
set q;oin<^ ])v the man whose head 
and hand had done so much 
toward preserving independence and keeping whole the union 
of the states — its defender and ruler. Tresident Grant. 

The second administration of Grant ilrew toward its 
close. And when people began to talk about who should be 
president after that, there were those all through the nation 
who said : " X(^ one can succeed him. Let us have C^rant 
for a third term." 




LKT NO GUrLlY MAN ESCATK." 



1 86 HOW THE TAXNER'S SOX SERVED THE SECOXD TIME. 



They had said the same thing about Washington, you 
know. 

But Washington, you remember, wouhl not serve a third 
time. He told the people that they were able to make a 
wise choice and that they must get a new president. It was 
not wise or right to keep putting the same man in the presi- 




MEMORIAI, HAI.I., PHII.ADKLPHIA. 

Krected as a 7netnorial of the Centennial Expositio)! and anniversary year of I'i'jCi. 

dent's chair. It was not good for him or for the nation. 
And then, you know, he issued his grand Farewell Address. 

President Grant did not issue a farewell address. He 
was a much voun^^er man than was Washington when his 
second term closed, and he did not feel that the occasion 
called for any such action. 

But he did see that it was not a wise thing to listen to 
the voice of those who cried "once more." lie did teel that 



IlOir THE TAXNEK'S SON SERVED THE SECOND TIME. 1S7 

if he should allow his name to be used ai;ain as a candidate, 
it would, in a way, force the party to nominate him, and this 
he believed to be a very bad thinir for the countrw I -or, if 
one man is able to say to the people " xou must keep me as 
a president," in time the republic would be no better than a 
tyrann\' and freedom would be in danger. 

So, thouL^h it meant loss and sacrifice to himself, he put 
aside all personal wishes or desires and said very tirmly : '• I 
will not serve as president for the third time. Choose 
someone else, and let me be a plain citizen of the United 
States once more." 

It turned out when he would not let his name be used, 
that it was not so easy to choose a new man. 

There was great difference of opinion ; and when the 
time came for a change there were many who wished to see 
the other party succeed. Two good and wise men were 
selected as candidates — one by the Republican and one by 
the Democratic party. 

But, so close was the election, that w hen election day was 
over, the votes were so nearly even and there were so many 
disputes about the voting that it was impossible to say 
which candidate was elected. 

The matter had to go to Congress for settlement. They 
appointed fifteen men to go over the whole matter ami 
decide. This was called the Electoral Commission and they 
went carefvUv over all the facts and figures trying to decide, 
did so; but even thev differed about the matter — seven of 



1 88 HOW THE TAN.VER'S SON SERVED THE SECOND TEME. 

them saying that the Democratic candidate was elected and 
eight of them that the Republican candidate was elected. 

The majority decided it. The Republican candidate was 
declared elected. But even then those on the other side 
were not satisfied. They said that the Democratic candi- 
date had really won and that the decision of the eight men 
should not be accepted. 

For a few days things looked threatening. Men talked 
wildly. But, in the president's chair at Washington, sat a 
man who could not be moved by talk and bluster. What- 
ever was the law that would Grant enforce. 

If the fifteen men had said that Mr. Tilden, the Demo- 
cratic candidate, had been elected. President Grant would have 
seen to it that Tilden was inaugurated president. A major- 
ity of the fifteen men had said that Mr. Mayes, the Repub- 
lican candidate, was the rightful president. It was the duty 
of President Grant to enforce the will of the majority, and 
he took every step necessary to secure the inauguration of 
Hayes. 

" Let us have peace " his action meant again. " But we 
will have justice." 

To the everlasting honor of Mr. Tilden let it be said that 
he sided with President Grant in working to still the loud 
talkers and act for peace. He wcjuld do nothing to help on 
the disturbing element, and, with Ulysses S. Grant in the 
White House, the disturbers dare not disturb. 

His firmness and determination to carr\- out the will of 



//OH' ULYSSES SAir Ti//'. \yo/</./^. 



IS9 



the i)t,'()plc as decided by llie majorit)- of the fifteen let the 
countrv know that it wouhl be carried out. The trrowls of 
disappointment grew weak ; the threats of the disobedient 
ones died awav, and I'lvsses S. drant, soldier-president to 
the last, handed o\'er his great office to his successor, Presi- 
dent Hayes, and became a plain citizen --Mr. (irant, once 
more. 



CHAPTER XI. 

HOW ULYSSES SAW THE WORLD. 

TS there any boy or girl who does not like a vacation? 
^ Perhaps such a curiosity does exist somewhere, but I 
have never seen one; have you? 

No matter how much we enjoy our work or our study, 
no matter what may be our occupation in life, a rest is 
alwa\s welcome, a change is always pleasant. 

It is so with bo\^s and 'Mrls ; it is so with men and 
women ; \'ou know the old rlnme. 

" .All work and no play 
Makes Jack a dull boy." 

It had been lots of hard work and very, \ er\' little j^lav 
for V . S. Grant all through his life. And from lS6o to 1S76 



190 



HO IV c/zvssjES saw the world. 



he had been so busy as soldier, as general, as conqueror. 

as secretary, as president, tliat life had been as crowded with 

work as it had been filled with honor. 

So, when the quiet of private life came, after the rush 

and worry of public station, the general looked about for 

some way in which he could <^et chan-^^e of scene and 

occupation. 

You remember, do you not, the reason why Ulysses the 

boy was willing to go to West 
Point ? Because of the journey 
there. It would give him a chance 
to see the world, he said, and he 
was even ready to accept the risk 
and work of West Point at the 
end, for the sake of the journey 
East and all the sicrhts and scenes 

he would see on his way to the Military Academy on the 

banks of the Hudson. 

This desire to travel and to see new places was with him 

all his life. So when his presidential terms were ended and 

he had time and leisure for the first time in all his busy life, 

he declared that he meant to see the world. 

When the government which he had served so well knew 

his desire and intention, it would have sent him across the 

sea in a special ship, setting apart one of our men-of-war 

for this purpose. 

But show and circumstance were just what General 




\ 



LOKlJ J:KAC(JNSI-1ELD. 

Prime minister of England at the time 
of Grant'' s visit. 



i/oir ( /.vssES SAW Tin-: wokld. 



191 







Grant wished to avoitl. Always the most nioilcst and retir- 
ing of men in private life, he wished to go abroad simplv 
as an American citizen on a \isit to his dauirhter. 

For you must know that this dcarlv-loved dau'ditcr 
Nellie — the girl who had stood beside him when he was 
first inaugurated president — had been married in the White 
House. She had iiuirried a young Englishman and had 
gone to Hngland to li\e. One 



of the ijeneral's chief reasons for 
his trip abroad was to visit 
Nellie. 

So, on the seventeenth of 
May, 1877, General Grant with 
his wife and his son Jesse sailed 
from Philadelphia on the steamer 
"Indiana" of the American line, en route for Enj^dand and 
the Continent. 

I speak o{ him here as General Grant. It is natural. 
With all his high record as a just and wise president, it is as 
General of the Armies of the Republic that he is most 
famous; it is as general that the world s|)eaks oi him. to-dav. 

It is still, with us. as it was with (xcneral Sherman, his 
loved and splendid assistant, when, in Philadelphia, he made 
the farewell speech ttj his old chief as a large com pan v 
assembled to bid Grant good-bye and God speed. 

" Wdiile you. his fellow-citizens." said General Sherman, 
"speak of him and regard him as ex-President Gmnr T (.ni- 



WILLIAM I. 

Empdror of Get many ,./ the time of 
Grant's visit. 



1/ 



192 HO IV ILYSSES SAJV THE WORLD. 

not but think of the times of the war, of General Grant — 
President of the United States for ei^^ht years — yet I cannot 
but think of him as the General Grant of Fort Donelson. I 
think ot him as the man who, when the country was in 
the hour of its peril, restored its hopes when he marched 
triumphant into Fort Donelson. After that, none of us felt 
the least doubt as to the future of our country, and there- 
fore, if the name of Washington is allied with the birth of 
our country, that of Grant is forever identified with its 
preservation, its perpetuation. It is not here alone, on the 
shores of the Delaware, that the people love and respect 
you, but in Chicago and St. Paul, and in far-off San Fran- 
cisco, the prayers go up to-day that your voyage may be 
prosperous and pleasant. God bless you, and grant you a 
pleasant journey and a safe return to your native land." 

That was a pleasant and friendly " send-off " from an old 
comrade, was it not? And General Sherman meant it all, for 
he loved and honored General Grant. 

But if the United States government could not prevail 
upon General Grant to go to Europe in a war-ship, specially 
set apart for his use, it did intend that the people across the 
Atlantic should have the opportunity to make the general's 
journey an enjoyable one. To do this, word was sent to all 
the men abroad who were the agents or representatives of 
the United States in Furope — our ministers an(^ consuls, 
they are called — in a note from the Secretary of State at 
\Vashin<rton. It read as follows: 



now LLVSSJ.S SAW 7 If/'' /r<Vv'//). 



»93 



'♦Gentli-men.— Ulysses S. Crant, the late Trcbidcnt of 
the United States, sailed from Philadelphia on the 17th inst. 

for Liverpool. 

"The route and extent of his travels, as well as the dura- 
tion oi his sojourn 
abroad, were alike un- 
determined at the 
time of his departure, 
the object of his jour- 
ney bein^ to secure a 
few months of rest 
and recreation alter 
sixteen vears of un- 
remittincr and devoted 
labor in the military 
and civil service of 

his country. 

"The enthusiastic 

nianifestatic^ns of pop- 
ular regard and es- 
teem for General 
Grant shown bv the 
people in all parts of 
the countrv that he has visited since his retirement froni 
official life, and attendin-" his every appearance in public 
from the day of that retirement up to the moment of 
his departure for Europe, indicate beyond question the 




EX-rRF.SinF.NT GRANT. 

/>. w a photograph taken at Galena, III., after his return from 

his trip arouiui the -oorlJ. 



194 



HOir C'LYSSES SAJF THE WORLD. 



high place he holds in the grateful affections of his 
countrymen. 

"Sharing in the largest measure this general public senti- 
ment, and at the same time expressing the wishes of the 
President, I desire to invite the aid of the diplomatic and 
consular officers of the Government to make his journey a 
pleasant one should he visit their posts. I feel already 
assured that }ou will find patriotic pleasure in anticipating 
the wishes of jthe department by showing him that attention 

and consideration which are 
due from every officer of the 
^ Government to a citizen of the 
Republic so signally distin- 
guished both in official service 
and personal renown." 

This note put every one on 
the lookout for the Lireat Ameri- 
can general. It is \(ix\ likely 
that, if General Grant had been asked, he would havc^ pre- 
ferred to go about without any one knowing it, just "on 
his own hook," you know. But, certainly, this preparing 
the way for his coming must have made his visit and his 
journe\-i ng all the more enjoyable. 

He travelled everx'where that he cared to; he saw everv- 

"thing there was to see; and the best of it was he did not 

have any one to find fault with him because he lini-ered 

here or loitered there, as when he first saw the world as a 




THE NORMAN GATE. 
At IViiidsor Castle. 



NOW LLYSSES S.IW TJIK WORLD. 



'9S 



boy, on his way to school at W'r^i Point, 'lluai. son icniLin- 
bcr, he stopped so lon;^^ in PhiLadclphia and New York 
" secin;^- the sii^hts " that liis folks at home scolded him for 
loitcrini^^ Now, there was no one to scold him; he was 
the head of his class. 

lie found all the doors open and every one ready to wel- 
come him. He x'isited the Oiicen of Kn-land at splended 

A\'indsor castle ; he 
called on the Em- 
peror of C/crmany 
at Berlin, he met 
the soldier {^resident 
of France. General 
■»u^ Li-. L r -v. -•«»-. " MacMahon, at 
\»Jf ' ^>? ' ' .- ->#^ 4i4Ui ■' 1 ''^ris, he was the 
imi. . >. o^!?^Mv' ^-u^.st of the boy- 

king of Spain at 
\^itoria, and the 
kincr of Portujj'al 
at Lisbon. He talked with the Pope at Rome and with the 
king of Italy, too. The king of Denmark at Copenhagen, 
the king of Sweden at Stockholm, the Iimperor of Austria 
at \'ienna, all said, " how do you do," in their most royal 
style, and the Czar of Russia at St. Petersburg welcomed 
him as a " great and good friend," as the letters between 
kings and presidents always say. 

In all o{ these interviews Grant bore himself modestly 




■VVftH,---m'Vii,,^i'/.V- 






GRANT AND lilSMARCK. 



196 nOJF ULYSSES SAW THE WORLD. 




I 



but manfully. His hosts respected and honored him, and 
felt that it was quite as great a privilege to see and talk: 
with the foremost American soldier as it was for him to see 
and talk with them. 

For, of course, it was a pri\'ilege, and as such General 
Grant reg^arded it. To dine with the Oueen of Encrland. to 
discuss military matters and affairs of state with Bismarck, 
to exchange greetings and opinions with the Pope — these 
opportunities were most welcome to so keen a student of 
men as General Grant ; but I am certain that, quite as much 
as royal interviews and princely festivities, did this sturdy 
American citizen appreciate and enjoy his chances to see 
and talk with the common people. For the people, whatever 
is their condition and whoever are their rulers, make up the 
nation, and their life and talk show what the spirit of that 
nation really is. 

So when Grant was in England, no occasion so gratified 
him as the crreetini: he received from hundreds of thousands 
of British workingmen. For it was the workingmen of 
Enirland, vou must know, who in the darkest davs of our 
Civil War held firmly to the side of liberty and union, even 
though their living depended on the trade in American cotton 
and though the Confederacy made all sorts of brilliant prom- 
ises if Encrk'ind would only recoL-nize and befriend it. It was 
the workingmen of England who kept off this recognition 
until the cause of free labor triumphed over slave labor, and 
the spirit of union over that of disunion. 



i/oir {/.}'ss/':s s.nr iJUi uokj.d. 



»97 



You can therefore easily understand \\li\' Grant was so 
delic'hted with his (:reetin<'' 1)\' the workers of Hn'dand. lie 
was a worker himself. He knew what it was to toil and 
sweat over his (la\'s "job" and he spoke from his heart 




WINDSOR CASTLt, HIE HOME OF THE QUEEN OK ENGLAND. 



when he replied to the address of welcome from the work- 
inermcn of Emjland. 

"There is no reception I am prouder of," he said, "than 
this one to-dav. I recoi/nize the fact that whatever there is 
of tj^reatness in the United States, or indeed in anv other 



iqS 



nOJV LLYSSES SAJV THE WORLD. 




country, is due to the labor performed. The laborer is the 
author of all greatness and wealth. Without labor there 
would be no government, no leading class, nothing to pre- 
serve. With us, labor is regarded as highly respectable. 

Wlien it is not so 
regarded, it is that 
man dishonors labor. 
" We recognize 
that labor dishonors 
no man ; and no mat- 
ter what a man's 
occupation, he is elig- 
ible to fill any post 
in the gift of the peo- 
ple. His occupation 
is not considered in 
the selection of him, 
whether as a law- 
maker, or an executor 
of the law. Now, 
gentlemen, in con- 

I'-y (•er)nission . liies //oiiii' Journal.'^ "^ 

CRANT ADDRliiiil.NC TlIK WORKINCMEN AT NKWCASTLK, KNG. clUSlOU all I CaU dO 

is to renew my thanks to you for the address, and to repeat 
what I ha\-e said before, tliat I have received nothing from 
an\' class since my arrival on this soil which has given me 
more pleasure." 

So when he came to Newcastle, in the great coal and 



j/oir C7,yss£s saw the world. 



'99 



iron district of r.n-'land, tiic city had a holiday, nrnjlish 
workers ^^rcctcd an American worker; to his \'ictorious arm 
they felt that nuieh t)f their own prosperity nii^^dit be due. 
They hailed hini \\ith banners and with cheers as '* the 
Hero of Freedom ; " and Grant, standing- on a platform in 
the midst of these shoutini^- thousands spoke the message of 
peace from America to Hn;^iand — the great and happv hope 
that was ever in his mind. For our greatest soldier was 
also our greatest peace-lover. 

From May, 1S77, to November, 1S78, General (^rant 
was in Europe. Besides his trip to the Continent he spent 
much of the time visitinor his dear dau<^htcr Nellie at her 
English home. 

Then he began to think of America. But the president 
of the United States saw how much -'ood this visit of Gen- 
eral Grant was doing for America, in what he did, what he 
said, and in his being seen and heard as the foremost Ameri- 
can of his day; so the president expressed a wish that Gen- 
eral Grant would keep on his travels and would visit those 
far eastern lands where an American was scarcely known or 
understood by the millions of people so different fn^m 
Americans in speech, customs, religion and life. 

This changed General Grant's plans. Me decided to 
come home by the way of Asia and make his journey a trip 
around the world. 

With United States government vessels placed at his 
service whenever he desired, with kings and consuls wait- 



200 



HO IV C'LYSSES SAW 7 HE WORLD. 



ing to receive him, and with eyes open to all that was 
curious, all that was notable and all that was interesting in 
those old lands that were new to him. General Grant, with 
his wife and eldest son, sailed from Marseilles in Southern 
France on the twenty-fourth of January, 1879, ^^^ what is 
known to us as the Far East — though really if you live in 
California or on the Pacific coast it is the Nearest West! 

It was a most extraordinary trip. It did not exactly 
reach up to Greenland's Icy Mountains (although the gen- 
eral, you know, had been to the Land of the Midnight Sun) 
but it did touch India's Coral Strand, and others of those 
far away regions which the old hymn writer had in mind 
when he said of them : 

"Where all the prospect pleases 
And only man is vile." 

The men who met and welcomed General Grant on his 
Oriental tour however were not at all vile ; they were courte- 
ous, interested and full of big-worded compliments. 

In India, in Siam, in China and in Japan, Grant met a 
quick and friendly welcome, even though the princes and 
people he saw were as opposite to him as possible in nature 
and in looks, and though, with the inability of people who 
live under a tyranny to understand the people who live 
under a republic, they persisted in lo(M<ing upon hini and 
referring to him as the "King of America." Imagine 
Grant, the most democratic of men, being hailed as king! 



j/oir r/.yssES saw ■iin- rf- '/>•//>. 203 

Welcomed like a kiiT', housed like .1 kiivj;, treated like a 



I r 
C3 



kincr. drant went from one stran<'"e land to another, studvin 
men and manners, eustoms and laws, more interested in the 
viceroy of China than in the ruins of Rome, more impressed 
b\- the people of Siam than 1)\- all tlie famous paintin^^s in 
the galleries of Europe. I'\)r General drant \\a> al\va\"s a 
student of men rather than of books, and a lover of the 
people of the world rather than the beauties of nature. 
Bismarck was more interesting' to him than Niagara, the 
Mikado of Japan than Mount Blanc. 

From Marseilles to Bombav, from Bombav to Calcutta, 
from Rangoon to Hong Kong, from Hong Kong to Canton, 
from Canton to Shanghai, from Shanghai to Peking, from 
Peking to Tokyo and from Tokyo home. This, with stops 
at man}' important and intermediate places, was the jour- 
ney of Grant in the East. He saw the Parsee sun worship- 
pers of the Towers of Silence; he rode on elephant-back to 
the sacred Ganges ; he saw the places made famous bv the 
terrible Sepoy rebellion in India; he saw the gate at Luck- 
now through which Jessie Brown heard the slogan that 
brought the pipers and relief to that beleagured citv ; he 
toasted, in the r')ritish colony of Hong Kong "the friendship 
of the two great English-speaking nations of the world — 
Ensj'land and America;" he swun*^ through the curious 
streets of Canton in a latticed bamboo chair; he saw his 
name coupled with those of Washington and Lincoln on the 
street-mottoes of Shanghai ; he talked long and pleasantlv 



204 



HOJV riA'SSES SAJr THE WORLD. 



with the great Viceroy of China, Li Hung Chung, and, leav- 
ine the United States war-shii) in the beautiful harbor of 
Nagasaki, he rode over the green hills of Japan and visited 
in his own palace of Enriokwan, the young Mikado of Japan 
— that hidden mystery of Eastern royalty, who, for the 




THE GATE AT LUCKNOW, INDIA. 

IViroHgh which relii/ came in the great Sepoy Rebellion. As General Grant saza it. 

first time in the history of the world now talked with a 
** foreigner." 

Then, at last, he turnc^l his face homeward. He bade 
good-bye to hospitable Japan and to that great Asiatic con- 
tinent that had been to him, from boyhood, alike mysterious 
and fascinatin-'' ; he said !j'ood-b\-e to the forei<'n lands he 



J/OW L/.VSSJ'IS S.lll' I HE WORLD. 



had visited and the stran<^^c sights he iiad seen, and, steam- 
ing aeross the wide Pacihe, set foot again upon his native 
land, entering it thiough that splenihd Uolden date uhieh, 
as a voiin*' oftieer in ( alitoiiiia. he had seen vears before, 




THE (;(M.1)EN UATF; SAN FRANCISCO HARBKK. 

Through which General Grant came home to America on his return from his trip around the world. 

but never dreamed that he should enter in this fashion, as 
the crreat Ameriean. homeward bound from his nnind of 
visits to the kings and queens and prinees and people of the 
world. 



2o6 THE OLD GENERAVS LAST ELGLLT. 

^ But he returned as he departed, untouched l)y lionizincr, 
unspoiled by fame, the simple, modest, clear-headed, practi- 
cal American citizen and gentleman — just U. S.Grant, the 
same as ever. 

CHAPTER XII. 

THF, OLD general's LAST FIGHT. 

ALTHOUGH vacations are welcome and rest or change 
is delio-htful, there are. but few men who like to have 
nothing to do. 

General Grant was not one of these. He liked to be 
occupied. His trip around the world was over, he was no 
longer in office or in the army, he was worth just about a 
hundred thousand dollars. If he could use this money 
wisely, he thought, he could make a good deal out of it and 
perhaps be worth a fortune — ^ which would be a good thing 

for his familv. 

As you know, the general's tastes were simple. He did 
love fine horses, he did enjoy a good cigar; but these were 
his only luxuries. 

He was very, very fond of his children. He wished to 
help them on in the world, and, after his return to America, 
he was anxious to do something that would occupy his 
mind and benefit his famih'. 



THE oil) GEXr.RA/.S J.A.si J- J GUI. 207 

He had been i^ivcn many presents by his fellow-country- 
men. They insisted on slKnvini^- him lujw iiuich they thou-ht 
ot what he had done for them and the rtpublic. He was 
given a fine Ikhisc in (Galena, one in Philadelphia, one in 
Washin<,non. and one in New York. The men who had 
money made him a ^ift of two hundred and fifty thousand 
dollars, the interest of which — that is, the money it earns 
each year -^ was to come to him. while the whole amount 
was to be kept untouched for his wife and children if he 
should die. 

He had one hundred thousand dollars of his own 
besides this, and the brownstone house in Hast Sixty-sixth 
street, near the Central Park, in New York, was full of pres- 
ents and trophies and mementoes that had been criven him 
by the princes and people he had visited in his journey 
around the world. 

In 1880 the National Republican Convention met at 
Chicago to nominate a new president of the United States. 
Many ot the men in that convention wished to nominate 
General Grant. But there was a stron<; opposition, not to 
Grant, but to allowing any man to be president of the 
United States more than twice. 

No president had ever had a third term. \\'ashingt(^n 
had stood out against it when he was asked to serve and 
his example has always been followed. Prol)ablv Grant 
would not have accepted the nomination, although he never 
did sa\ anything until it was time to speak. 



2 08 



THE OLD GENERAL S LAST FIGHT. 



^\\ 



teM 



A. 



r^ 







So the fear that the people wuiild not like it carried the 
day, and another man was nominated for president. But 
three hundred and six of the delegates to the convention 
held firmlv to^'ether, votincr every time for General Grant. 
If he had been nominated, and if he had accepted, there is no 
douljt that he would have been elected, for he was the great- 
est living American and the people 
were true to the man who had made 
almost their very existence possible. 
He did not wish the office aijain; 
he would not have accepted it or 
served had he not felt that it was 
the will of the people. To that he 
always bowed obedience. It is 
probable, had he been elected, that 
he would have made a better presi- 
dent than ever, for his trip around 
the world had given him a new 
knowledge of men and of nations, 
sTRKKT, NKw YORK CITY. ^^^(1 that cxperieucc would have 

{Here he bcisan to write his ^^ Memoirs.") ■ J ^ 1 K • ,, x.1 * 1 i. • i.1 

aided him greatly m conducting the 
affairs of the republic and keeping it up to the mark along- 
side the rest of the world. 

But, instead cf a political campaign, he had another fight 
before him — the fiercest, most unrelenting and most desper- 
ate of anv that it had ever fallen to the lot of the ereat 
soldier to face and \\a<ifc. 




(JKANl's MOMK IN KASl SIXIY-SIXTH 



7///'. oi.n (;f.xekai:s last j/gui; 209 

He was sixty years old ; he \\a> lic:ilih\ . wealthy and 
wise. The woiKI was '^oiii.^' \w\\ with him. lli> fame was 
at its hiijhest. His name was honored throii'-hoiit all the 
world. It seemed as thouj^h n(Uhin^- could disturb or mo- 
lest him, and \et, at one blow, the old i^eneral was struck 
down- wounded in the tenderest of all places — his honor 
— his re})utati(^n — his word. 

It was this way. In i SSo he had gone int(j Inisiness, 
investing" the hundred thousand dollars, of which I have 
told vou, in the banking business in w hich one of his sons 
was a partner. 

The bankintj' business. \ou know, is one that deals with 
money, lending, using or in\'esting it so as to get large 
returns and good profits. It is a very fine antl high-toned 
business when honorably conducted. But it gives oppor- 
tunitv to a dishonest or bad man to harm and hurt other 
people, by what is called speculation. 

General (irant was not an active ])artner in the busi- 
ness. He ])ut in all his monev and was to ha\c- part of the 
profits. He had perfect confidence in his son and his son's 
partner. 

At first the firm made lots of money. General Grant's 
name, of course, gave people confidence and one of the part- 
ners was such a sharp and .shrewd business man that people 
called him the "Napoleon of finance" — which means that 
he was such a i^'ood hand to manaije monev matters that he 
C(^uld conquer evervthing opposetl to him in business, just 



210 



THE OLD GENERAL'S LAST FIGHT. 



as Napoleon did in war. lUit Napoleon, ^•ou know, was 
defeated and utterly overthrown at Waterloo ! 

It was the night before Christmas in the year 1883, 
when (leneral Grant, as I have told you, was feeling that 
everything was going fine!)' with him, that he was well and 
strong and, that he was very nearly a millionaire on the 
profits of his banking business, that he slipped on the iee in 




THE HARBOR OF NKW YORK. 



front of his house and hurt one of his muscles so badlv that 
he had to go to bed and was kept indoors for weeks. \'ou 
would not think a little fall like that would be so bad, but 
when a man gets to be o\'er sixty he does not get o\'er the 
shock of such an accident as easily as he did when he was 
sixteen. From that Christmas day of 1SS3 General Grant 
was never again a well man. 

Still he felt C()mforta])lc in liis mind, for his affairs were 
prosperous, and for the first time in his life he was able to buy 



THE or.n Gr.xj.RAi.s /.-is/' in; in: 211 

what he pleased and to spend as he liked, with a i^ood bi;^' 
sum in the hank. 

On the niornini^'' of Tuesda\-, the sixth of May, i8<S4, 
General (irant was. as he thouijht, a millionaire. Before 
sunset that same da\' he knew that he was ruined. 

The bank had failed. The " Xapoleon of tlnance " 
whom everyone thought so smart a business man, had been 
too smart. lie had speculated and lost everythin^j;-. 

Worse than this he had lied and stolen. lie had used 
the name and fame of General (jrant to back up wicked 
schemes and dishonorable transactions; he had used up all 
the money put into the business by General Grant and Mrs. 
Grant and the others who had gladly put in the money 
because of General Grant's name, and he had so turnetl and 
twisted and handled thini/s that not a dollar was left in the 
business. General Grant and his sons were ruined ; their 
good names apparently, were disgraced by being mi.xed up 
with the affairs antl wickednesses of their bad and bold part- 
ner, who, as soon as he saw the truth was out ran away, like 
the thief and coward he was. 

Every one was surprised. More than this, they were so 
startled that, for a time, even the great name of Grant 
seemed beclouded, and thoughtless people, cruel people, the 
folks who like to talk and to say things without thinking of 
the consequences, said mean and hateful and wicked and 
untruthful thin-'s about this "-reat antl noble soldier who 
never in his life had done a dishonorable act, or said a mean 



2X2 THE OLD GEXERArS LAST FLGHT. 

or unkind thing, or knowingly injured a single person. It 
was hard, was it not ? 

It was especially hard on such a man as General Crant. 
He never complained, he never spoke of the treatment to 
his friends; but it hurt terribly. 

It made him sick. It weakened a constitution already 
undermined by the shock of that fall on the ice, and it 
developed a terrible trouble in his throat that brought him 
months of suffering, of torture and of agony. 

Before this developed however, he had set to work to do 
something to earn money. For, to make a bad matter 
worse, somcthin"" was wron"" with the wav the trust fund of 
5^250,000, of which I have told you, was invested and no 
money could come from that for months. A great maga- 
zine wished him to tell for its readers the storv of one of his 
battles, and, although General Grant had never tried or even 
thought of such a thing, he did set to work, and wrote the 
story of how he fought the battle of Shiloh ; then he wrote 
another one telling how he captured Vicksburg. 

It was while he was at work on these articles that the 
trouble in his throat developed. It grew worse and worse. 
The doctors could not cure it ; they could hardlv give him 
relief from the pain that came; and the first struggle with 
the dreadful disease was harder to stand than anv battle-grip 
he had ever wrestled w ith. 

At first he was discouraged. For, as he looked at the 
wreck of his fortune made by the dreadful business failure, 




TJIK OLD general's LAST FIGHT. 
{S/ck, almost iiying, but yet ddermttud to win, hf wrote the story of his life. ) 



TiiK oi I) GhM-.K.u s J.. I. .J- in. in: 215 

and knew that he was a sick man, no longer able to work or 
make his own livin--, the future looked verv dark and he 
could not sec how he could make thini^s better lor his wife 
or the l)()\s he so dearh' loved. 

Then it was that he determined to write, as did lulius 
CcTesar. tlie story of his life, his battles and his campai-ns. 
Publislurs in different parts of the country, when they saw 
how interesting; were the two articles he had j)ul)lished and 
how interested the people were in reading them, knew that 
his story of the war would be a very successful book and 
made him all sorts of offers and promises, if he would 
write it. 
. He saw a way out of his difriculties ; he determined to 

try. Then the world saw one of the most remarkable things 
in all its long history — a sick man. without experience or 
training, deliberate!}- sitting down to write the storv of his 
life, fighting off death with all the mi-ht and stren<--th of 
his giant w ill, in order to save his name from dishonor and 
leave something for his wife and children after the death 
that he knew was not far awav. 

In his room in the second story of that vine-covered 
brownstone house in Sixty-si.\th street the fight went on. 
Now up, now down: sometimes so imijroved that everv one 
save the doctor, was full of hope: now down S(^ low that the 
faltering breath nearl)- stopped, and only by stimulents u.is 
life bought back and death held at bay. thus he lived : and still 
the pencil kept going busily, whenever there was a pause in 



2i6 THE OLD GEXKRAL'S LAST FIGLLT. 

the weakness or the pain. Writing or dictating, sometimes 
four, sometimes six, sometimes eight hours a dav, so the 
months went on. tintil, at hist, on the 9th of June, 1885, he 
was removed to Mount McGregor near Saratoga, in New 
York, and there, ahiiost within sight of a famous field of battle 
and surrender in which his forefathers had joined, the fight 
for life and for strength to finish his work went on. 

It was a tremendous effort. He had barely two months 
to live; but, in the eight weeks that followed the first of May, 
he did more work, in writing his book, than in any other 
eiirht weeks of his life. As an armv in battle sometimes 
gathers up all its strength for a final charge or for a last 
stand against the foe, so the old general, weakened by dis- 
ease, worried by anxiety, but determined to win. actually 
held death at bay until the work he had set himself to do 
was accomplished. 

Think of it, boys and girls, for it is one of the most 
remarkable things that ever happened, the most heroic act 
in all this great soldier's wonderful career. 

And the book that he wrote and completed under those 
fearful conditions is one of the world's notable books, while 
its success more than met the desires of the writer and 
placed his family again in comfort and security. 

It was a wonderful victory. 

As he lav there sick, dying, but working manfully and 
well, the sympathy of all tlie world went out to him. 
Friend and foe, Northerner and Southerner, American and 



'J UK OLD i.j-.AKK.ir / / •/ //(;///: 



•7 



alien, priiuc and kiii;^. \\()rkin;^ni:in .nil laborer, the \\v^\\ and 
the- hunil)K-, www and women, old and xoun'- — I'roin all these 
all o\cr the land and across the -<-as in the countries he 
had visited, eanie words of sympathy, of incjuiry and of 




THE COTFAGK ON MOUNT MCGRKlIOK, NKAK SARATOGA, IN WHICH litNfcRAL GRANT Dltl>. 



affection which showed how all the world loves and hon-T-; 
and reveres a real hero. 

Froni his sick room went out this message to the world, 
whispered with stammerini; tones. 

" I am \'er\' much touched an<l ''rateful for the .s\-mi)aiiiv 
and interest manifested in me hv mv friends and bv those 



!lS 



THE OLD GEXEKAL'S LAST EIGHT 



who have not hitherto been reg"arded as my friends. I de- 
sire the good-will of all, whether heretofore friends or not." 

At last, the work was done. The book was finished. 
On the first day of July, 18.S5, his preface was dated and 
signed. On the next day, silently thinking over what he 
had done, what he had suffered and what might still be 
before him, he 
wrote a remark- 
able letter to his 
doctors w h i c h 
closed in this 
way : '' If it is 
within God's 
providence," he 
wrote, " that I 
should go now, I 
am ready to obey 
his call without 
a murmur — I 




THE OUTLOOK AT MOUNT MCOREGOR. 



1 1 1 r nil'. OLM l.UUK Al MOUNT .MCUKtUOK 

S nOU ICl prei er go- ^ /jy.^,,.^. Cdural Grant would bf luh^ded in his invalid chair to get the vie^u 
ing now to endur- heliked,cr.er,hevalUy.) 

ing my present suffering for a single day without hope of 
recovery. As I have stated, I am thankful for the Provi- 
dential extension of my time to enable me to continue my 
work. I am further thankful, and in a much greater degree 
thankful, because it has enabled me to see for myself the 
hai)pv harmonv which so suddenly sprung up between those 



IJIK OLD GEXHRALS LAST L'JiiHL. 219 

fiiua^jcd but a few \cars a-'o in cKadK' conllicl. Ii lia^ In ( n 
an incstiniablc hlcssini; to iiic to licar the kind expressions 
toward nie in perst)n from all [)arts of the country, troni jx (»- 
pic of all nationalities, of all religions and of no relij^non. (-1 
Confederates and National troops alike. . . They have 
brought iov to niv heart, if the\- lia\e not affected a cure. 
So to you and xour colleagues 1 acknowledge niv indebted- 
ness for having brought me through the valley of the 
shadow of death to enable me to witness these things." 

You see, to the last, the <'Teat soldier's thouirhts were all 
for peace. He had seen battles. He knew the horrors of 
war. Hl knew the beauty of peace. 

With his work finished, his desire for life was gone. He 
knew what life meant — suffering. He wished release and 
peace. A few days longer he lingered on, then, quietly, 
calmh'. in the cottage on the mountain top came the end. 
The last hght was over; the last victory had been won. 

On the morniniT of the twentv-third of I niv. iSS:,. the 
tired hand dropped limply within that of the patient, faithtul 
wife. Then the telegraph clicked; a brief message went 
abroad overall the earth; the flacr on the White House at 
Wa'^hington dropped to half-mast. General (irant was dead. 



2 20 U'lIAT THE WORLD SAYS. 



CIIAPTI'R \III. 



WHAT THE WnRLI) SAYS. 



W 



j\JV\W flags at half-mast, amid tolling- bells and draped 
houses and silent throngs of watchers, the dead 
general was brought from his cottage on the mountain-top 
to the great state capitol at Albany and then down the 
river to the city which had been his home. 

There were processions and parades, a city hung with 
black, a nation dotted with half-masted flags as, with the 
slow and measured step of many troops, the great soldier 
was carried to his grave on the heights abo\e the Hudson. 

There, in the temporary tomb of brick and iron, curved 
into a temple-like dome, the worn body was left, covered 
with flowers and ^'arlanded \\ith the meniories of a q-rateful 
nation. 

The president ami ex-presidents of the United States, 
cabinet secretaries, senators, governors, generals and admirals, 
soldiers who wore the blue, soldiers who wore the gray, men, 
women and children, a vast and notal)le thronsj-, escorted the 
dead soldier through the cit\' streets and stood about h.is 
modest resting place on beautiful l\i\erside Dri\e. 

The bugle-call sounded " taps"; again it sounded "rest "; 
then, from the war ship in the ri\er below, boomed out the 



U'll.ir I HE no A' /J) SAYS. 



2 2 1 



farewell ''iin ; llu- door of tin- lilllc tcjini) s\Min</ shut; the 
threat crowd nu-ltcd a\\;i\'. and onlv the silent soldier and 
his jjiiard ol honor were Ictl on the blutts abo\-e the river. 
so L^reen and beautiful that lair niidsuninier dav AultusI 



t"^' 



the eii;hth. i S,S5. 






t; 



/'■ 



m. 



"Vf ■ 




^' -"■iiiJ i .^ ,,. 







\ 



4 



I V 



THE TEMPORARY TOMI! UF GENERAL GRANT, RIVERSIDE 
DRIVE, NI-.\V YORK CITY 

And a poet w rote : 

'■The stars look down upon thy calm repose 

As once on tented tield, on battle eve, 
No clash of arms, sad heralder of woes 

Now rudely breaks the sleep God's peace enfolds, — 

Good night. 

"Thy silence speaks and tells of honor, truth. 

Of faithful service, — generous victory, — 
A nation saved. For thee a nation weeps, — 

Clasp hands again, through tears ! Our leader sleeps ! 

Good night." 

And from that da\' to this how that threat leader's fame 
has </one on increasiu'', until, to-dav, the three names that all 
America links together as those of its j;reatest, noblest, wor- 
thiest sons are Washin-^ton. Lincoln, (irant — the f(^under. ly^ 



222 



WHAT THE WORLD SAYS. 



the liberator and the savior of the Union. So. already they 
have been joined together on a portrait medal ; so, as the 
years go on, will they be joined in the hearts of the Ameri- 
can people reverencing' those who served the republic. 




Till, \1K\V ACROSS TlIK KIVKK IKoM (IKANl'S TO.Mli A 1' Kl VKKSIDK. 

We all like to know what sort of a man a really great 
man is. 

Ver\- much like other men \()U \\ill find him to be, 
until some great opportunitN' comes to test and tr\' him ; 
then he rises above all his fellows — grand, impressive, 
monumental. 



Wll.ir I HI: WORLD SAYS. 323 

Some' one has said thai Cu-ncral C'iimiu's greatness was 
made- by ()i)|)orUinity. And this is al)()iit rii^dit. 

You ha\'c read liis htr as here written. NOu kn<»w how 
litth' tin re was to mark him as great, in his hfe. from 1.S22, 
when he was horn in the little Ohio village, to iSOi.when he 
was ealled to duty t'rom the leather-selling rountr:r in the 
Illinois eity of C.alena. 

Simi)le, modest, unambitious, caring only for his wife and 
family antl thinking only <^\ their welfare, finding life a hard 
battle, but never comj)laining or dreaming of surrender — 
so he lived for forty years ; so he would have lived on to the 
end had not the occasion for action roused him, formed 
him. developed liim. until he became the leader, the genius, 
the concjueror, the deliverer, the ruler, the hero, the man. 

As a leader vou have seen how he was brave as a soklier, 
ereat as a {general, greater as a conciueror. 

■ His coolness in battle was wontlerful, nothing disturbed 
or excited him ; nothing drew off his attention from the plan 
he was \\ orkinsj' out. His voice was seldom raised in the 
fierce, hoarse shout of war, and newr in anger. 

When a shell burst almost at his t'eet. in the dreadful 
battle of Spottsyhania. he kept on writing, never ri.sing 
from the stum}) which he called his " headcpiartcrs." hardly 
looking uj) to sec what the fuss was about, an<l a wcuinded 
soldier who was being carried b\' and saw it all said, admir- 
inglv. "Well. Ulysses don't scan^ a bit. does hr .- There is 
nothing soldiers admire so nun h as bravery. 



224 



WHAT 7 HE WORLD SAYS. 



Once, at a lull in the great Ijattle called the Wilderness, 
the wounded (General Hancock sprang from the ground at 
the sound of distant hring and buckling on his sword called 
for his horse so as to ride out into battle. But Grant sat 
calm and unconcerned, and kept on whittling. 

" Don't worry, general," he said, " It takes hring on both 
sides to make a battle. That's all on one side." 

As a ii'enius — vou know what that is : a man to whuni 

is given a natural 
gift for creating and 
doing things impos- 
sible to most people 
— Grant stands out 
as, bevond all others, 
^^ the man of the cen- 
^5=- tury with a genms 
for success in war. 

Early in the 
stru^'i^'le he saw how 
the war should be 
fought. After D.)nclson, so he tells us. he began to see how 
important was the work that Providence had marked out for 
him. He saw what that work was and how to do it. as did 
no other leader. The power was in him. It only needed 
the opportunitN' to develop it. and when that opportunity 
came he rt)se to the occasion as few other men ha\e cU)ne in 
history — as no soldier has done since Naj^oleon. I he same 




HANCOCK AND GRANT. 

" Doiil 'iuorry, general. That's all on one siiie." 




AT SPOITSYl,\ AMA 

" H'fll, Ulysses don't siare a hU, does ke / " 



/ / •//.-/ / • THE I i OK 1. 1) S.-1 VS. 22^ 

inm-iuiitN iIkiI Unl him lo IkuiI a l^uii into the steeple ol the 
little ihiiich ill Mexico ;iii<l Ihiiik the (lefeiiders of the ^ate. 
led him to i iic iiiiu'ent the Contedcrate plans and Confeder- 
ate defenders at Vicksl)urg, to carrv tin- da)- at ('hattanooga 
and to hnalh' niakc^ \'ictor\' at the W'ilderness. 

When \\\c sortie was made \)\ the eneniv at Fort Done!- 
son and his men fcarcil a «'eneral attack, (irant mused o\-er 
agroupof dead Confederates. " I luii' haxcrsacks are tilled." 
he said. " That means that they don't intend to stay here and 
fight us ; they intend to hi^ht their own way out. They arc 
desperate. Now then, w hiche\'er side attacks first is certain 
of \'ictor\'. TheN'll have to be pretty (|uick if they are going 
to beat me." He acted at once, and, before night, Donelson 
fell. 

It was in emergencies like this that Crant came out 
strongest and in which his genius shone bright. To many 
he seemed slow, silent, indifferent ; instead, when the supreme 
moment canu-, he was alert, i)rompt, decided. 

But genius is displayed ([uite as much in persistence as 
in pluck. It was Grant's one great purpose to keep at it and 
never to give in, to fight it i^ut on tin- line upon \\hi( h he 
had resolved, to take- no backward step, that brought him 
success and triumph. (General Cirant was a great soldier 
because he could see jtist w hat to do and iii>t how to do it, 
when other leaders hesitated and ex|)erimente(l. He won by 
energy and tenacity; he saved the nation by patience, push 
and enduranci-; he attained tame 1)\' absolute- persistence, 



228 WBA7' THE WORLD SAYS. 

audacity, determination, unconquerable will — these were the 
proofs of his genius. 

As a conquered" he was one of the greatest and most 

\^ magnanimous that the world has known. What his sword 
had achieved, his generosity consummated. He conquered 
the enemies of the Union in \\ar; he conquered them again 
in his generous terms at surrender; he conquered them yet 
again when he stood as their champion against persecution. 
In no pride of pomp or vain glory did he receive Buck- 
ner's surrender at Donelson, Pemberton's at Vicksburg or 
Lee's at Appomattox. The instant these old comrades of 
other days were overpowered they were no longer his 
enemies; they were his fellow-countrvmen — his friends, 
lie thought more of his muddy boots than of his triumph 
as he went toward the ^IcLean farmhouse at Appomattox 
to receive the surrender of Lee. He did not even wear his 
sword, nor did he demand that of his captive, as laid down 
in the laws of war. No troops paraded, no banners streamed, 

^ no triumph music sounded as the brave men in gray yielded 
to the men in blue. Grant had not concpiered his foes; he 
had convinced his fellow citizens. 

As a man he was the kind that the world loves to 
^ remember and talk about — loval to his friends, forQ'ivinsj' to 
his foes, calm in the face of danger, firm in the hour of 
decision, modest and unassuming in his tlaily life, loving' 
and tender in his home, a leader when he led, a hero when 
called upon to face either danger, disaster or death. 



wjj.ir TJiE iroA'j.D s.ns. 



2-9 



llcl()\(-(l children. For his own t hihlrcn he \\ as rcaily 
to la\' down his liu. For ihcni and for his dearly lox'ed 
wife he slruj;gleil with death, writin- a hook that was to 
heeonie famous and to make them eomfortahle for the future. 
One of the most charmin;^ pietures of (irant the man and 




THE GRANT MONUMENT AT CHICAGO. 
/tt /.nifp/ti P.irk, fiot fur frt<in St. Gtiudeus' statue of Li>in>.'». 



the father, is that i^nven by his son, who says that when the 
ehildren were vounc^, his father was seldom away fn)m 
home; he found his greatest pleasure there, and delighted in 
reading aloud for the 1)enefit of his ehildren. " I remem- 
ber," savs his son, " that, in this wav. he read to us all of Dick- 



230 WHAT THE WORLD SAYS. 

ens' works, many of Scott's novels and other standard works 
of fiction. I recall the evenings when we all sat around in 
the family circle and enjoyed listening" to these stories which 
pleased my father quite as much as they did the children. 
This reading- always took place in the early part of the even- 
ing because we were sent to bed at a reasonable hour." 

This is interesting, is it not ; but more touching is it to 
know that through all the years of his duty and fame as 
general and president and as our greatest citizen, he wore 
about his neck an intertwined braid made of the hair of his 
wife and child, sent to him after that plucky fight with the 
plague in the early days at Panama, of which I have told 
you, and when far away from his dear ones on the Pacific 
coast. And when, at Mount McGregor, he gave up the 
long, bitter fight with pain and death, al)()ut his neck was 
found the same braid of twisted hair, worn there as a 
precious keepsake for over thirty years. 

No man is perfect; all of us make mistakes and have 
our imperfections. No man has been more maligned or 
criticised or talked against than General Grant. As we look 
back over the )'ears we see, now , that most of this harsh 
language was wrong and uncalled for. This simple, silent, 
honest, straightforward man was trying to do his dutv, as 
he saw it, and in his own simple anel manly fashion. If 
he did not (\o it in the wa\' that suited every one, mav not 
that have be-en the fault of his critics (piite as much as of 
himself? There are two sitks to e\ery shield, you kiu)w-. 



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WHAT JJIK WOKLD SAYS. 



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The years pass on ; twenty-two in all had i^onc since 
that solemn niidsiininier tiimral procession; then, in the 
sprin;^ ol 1^97, on the Apiil ila\' that wonld ha\e been his 
l)irlhda\' on larlh 
had lie lived so loni;, 
the cherished re- 
mains, which had 
been taken from the 
little t e m [)o ra r\' 
toml) in which they 
had lain for nearly 
twelve years and 
deposited in a L^rand 
and j^lorious mauso- 
leum, were honored 
with a splendid me- 
morial ovation. 

On the heights 
of l\i\"erside, over 
lookin-'- the heauti- 
ful Hudson and 
the great and pros- 
perous cit\- which 
so reveres and honors him, the splendid UKMUiment stands 
a landmark tor miles around. The modest, unassuming 
soldier who disliketl show and parade, and, hated especially, 
to have "a fuss" made over him, received on the 22(1 of 




w 



I' 



,Miir_ _ 

TUF SKCONn KUNKKAL OF GRANT. 

The transfer Jot m the temperary tomb to the great mausoleum. 



\n 



234 WHAT THE WORLD SAYS. 

April, 1897, one of the grandest ovations ever given to 
man. 

Soldiers marched, orators spoke, the people in great and 
marvelous throngs assembled to pay to the dead leader new 
and impressive honors. But, in doing so they honored them- 
selves. For it was because of what he did and of what he 
was that the world thus publicly honored him ; and, as time 
goes on, longer than that great gray monument shall stand 
above his silent dust, while the words honor, duty, courage, 
faith, simplicity, worth, will and loyalty mean anvthing, so 
long will the world reverence and uplift the name and fame 
of U. S. Grant, the <T-reatest American soldier. 



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